Dreams and Reality
by dawnriser
Summary: A small accident and Harry starts having dreams of a city plagued by beasts in the shape of men. where sickness flows through the streets in the form of monsters and walking nightmares. The line between dreams and the world blur and disappears, dragging Harry into a world where blood is worth more than gold and eyes can see past the fragile boundaries of reality.
1. Chapter 1

The black magical siderite blade gleamed in the pale moonlight as its owner knelt on a bed of flowers. A great tree cast long shadows across the still meadow, shrouding the two men in its darkness.

Dead eyes poured tears down worn cheeks as they waited for the end, their final end. The end to a dream they had been yearning for since taking up their title and duties. Months of what could only be called torture had removed any semblance of life from the blue orbs and nothing remained save for a husk.

A tall old man with a peg leg stood over him. His wooden leg sinking into the soft soil, but he did not notice, too focused on the pitiful man in front of him. Powerful corded arms betrayed the apparent age of the man as he held a massive scythe up as easily as if he was merely reaping barley.

"I had hopes for you, Frederick," The old man said sadly, "You lasted longer than many others and I thought that you may have been the one. The one to finally allow to me to find my peace..."

The man in the dirt remained silent, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him.

"But I was wrong," The old man sighed wearily as his arms tensed. "I release you from the dream and you shall know the salvation that you have denied me. Farewell, and may you find your worth in the waking world."

The old scythe swung down and parted through skin and bone as if they were not even there. A dull thump echoed through the empty clearing as the headless body collapsed, blood spraying down the front of the old man.

The grey haired man bent down when he noticed a shine coming from the man's belt. Slowly, he formed an idea that blossomed into reality a moment later. He reached for the man's belt and drew the weapon that had faithfully served him to the end. The metal turned out to be more unyielding than the man that wielded it.

"I curse this blade to do what its master couldn't," He intoned as a great deal of energy was flooded into the twisted blade. "One day, this blade will find the hunter I need and bring him to me. A hunter that will finally end this dream. They will not back out even if their mind shatters and their body flags. Go forth and find a worthy master."

He carefully planted the blade back on the body and felt the man's consciousness finally transcend the dream, taking the cursed siderite blade with him. However, unlike the past couple hunters that he had released, his soul did not go back to Yharnam where it would be free from the dream. Rather it flowed off into the distance before disappearing in its journey to another land. The old man pushed it away from his mind, it did not matter where the soul went as long as he got the hunter he needed to end it all.

A stiff breeze flew through the meadow, kicking up flower petals that coated the blood slowly seeping out of the body. The old man fell backwards and settled into his wheelchair with a grunt.

"Doll!" The man barked harshly, "It is time to lay another one to rest, get your useless body over here and bury him."

A woman came out of the shadows and slowly grabbed the body and began dragging it away with practiced ease. She would have left the clearing straight away, but a gnarled, blood coated hand stopped her. The old man's grip fastened around her wrist in a painful grasp that dug into her skin.

"Get me a towel too," Commanded the old man harshly, pushing her out of his way roughly, "Worthless doll. Why'd I get stuck here with you?"

"Yes master," The doll replied sadly as she pulled the still warm corpse from the clearing. "Right away."

The second the head had rolled from his shoulders and into the field of white flowers, Frederick awoke to the sunlight bearing down on his face.

He looked around and found himself in a rural village that looked familiar, but for the life of him, did not know where he was. It did not feel like home and he was sure that his small twenty person village did not have over fifty wooden buildings in the town square.

He looked down and noticed that he was not wearing the clothing that he last remembered putting on. Rather than a simple farming outfit, he had dirty robes swathing his body in hot fabric. What caught his attention was the blade that was sheathed at his hip though.

He tried to remember the last thing that he had done, but for the life of him, he could not figure it out. He knew something important happened to him, but it was as if the memory was just not there anymore.

The next thing he knew, a group of townspeople were in front of him with torches and pitchforks, all of them were shouting about wizardry and devil worship. He felt some stirring of familiarity to such a raving crowd, but a heavy rock colliding with his forehead knocked what little sense he had gathered. He was soon bound, gagged, and hauled away from where he had been laying, his blade left in the dust.

The blade soon fell into the hands of a greedy townsperson, who had seen the quality of the blade and noted the rarity of the metal. It was the reason that he had told everyone that the strange man was in cohorts with the devil after all. It worked like a charm.

The blade remained in the man's possession for a couple years before it was traded away to settle a debt to a travelling caravan. The trader had no need of the sword, so he had pawned it off to a black market weapons dealer as soon as he could.

The exotic appearance of the blade attracted one of the man's most loyal customers. A collector by the name of O'Reilly, a minor lord with a love for unnatural blades. Not to use, but to put into a show that he could show off to other lords and make it seem like he was interesting.

The blade hung on the wall for years, never losing its edge and gleam, even after years of poor maintenance. When O'Reilly and his family fell out of grace with the king, his castle was ransacked and the blade was one of the treasures that was stolen. From there it saw much more combat, so much so that the metal was slowly coated in dried blood as people's inability to maintain such an odd weapon started to build over the years to the point where the blade was almost useless.

Then after such a long history, the blade was stored away and would not see the light of day save for small intermissions of transit from one box to another for the next twenty years.

The next time that it saw the light of day was when a boy popped open the wooden box it had been locked in for years and look inside with glee. The irish boy grinned at his small find and quickly secreted it away in his trunk.

"Hurry up Seamus!" A heavily accented voice called from below, "I don't know what you are doing up there, but you will miss the express if you do not get down here,"

"I'm coming, ma!" The boy called back as he sealed his find in his trunk. He could not wait to show the guys at school what he had found.

It was not like he was breaking any rules. Nothing in the rulebook said they could not bring a sword, they just couldn't use it on anyone. As Seamus stepped away from the box, his foot stomped on something. He looked down and found a note.

"Cursed blade. Blood soaked battles. Blah blah blah. Rumored to have come from a strange man accused and tried for consorting with devils and witches." Seamus read before tossing it to the side. "Cool! A wizard sword! I'm definitely showing the guys this!"

[page break]

Harry was annoyed, both at Hogwarts and Dumbledore. Most of his frustration had to do with his favorite sport, Quidditch being canceled for the year. He just did not understand why an entire year had to be taken up by a measly three events that happened every couple of months. They could have easily fit the quidditch tournament into the year around the triwizard schedule.

From the dour mood that pervaded the Gryffindor common room, the sentiments were shared with almost everyone.

Several of the sixth and seventh years that qualified for the tournament, all huddled together, talked about how they would join the tournament and what they would do with the money and notoriety. Harry personally did not see the point of wanting fame. He had it and he had come to the consensus years ago that being famous was overrated. He could not even walk down Diagon alley without being swarmed by fans and people that wanted to get close to him to leech off his fame.

However, out of all the students down about the absence of Quidditch, only one did not look too put out from the announcement despite being a huge fan. Seamus Finnegan almost seemed to have been vibrating in his seat throughout the entire feast and it had only gotten worse when he had stepped into the common room.

Throughout the rest of the day, he was buzzing around the room, his general happiness had begun to grate on everyone's nerves.

It all came to a head when they went up to their new dorm room that night. Ron had been eating some of the candy he picked up from the train and after watching Seamus twitch for the hundredth time, he threw a jelly bean at him.

"Oi!" The gangly teen loudly called out, "What is wrong with you?"

Seamus would normally throw something back or make a rude comment, but he just let the assault go. "I got something to show you!" He dove off his bed and started rummaging around in his trunk. Now everyone was curious about what the boy had with him.

The little souvenirs that he brought from home to show everyone were always interesting. The most interesting being an old disarmed mortar from World War 2. Well interesting to Harry since he, like every other boy in primary school, had read about them and found them fascinating. It was horrifying to all the purebloods though, but that may have been because none of them knew anything about muggle weapons and how dangerous they actually were.

However, what he pulled out could be appreciated by everyone. It was a thin wooden box that was longer than his arm. He carefully laid it out on the bed and opened it. Inside was quite the sight.

Laying on a red cushion was the strangest blade that Harry had seen in his life. The metal was entwined and was missing the middle. The top of the blade was like a talon pointing back while the hilt had a notch on the bottom for some reason. The black metal had a wave of red along the edges of the blade.

"This blade is an heirloom that my family has had for years," Seamus said as he lifted up the sword, struggling slightly with the weight. "I found a note in the case saying that it used to belong to a hunter or something centuries ago. It is supposedly cursed with something, but that's just nonsense. It comes from my father's side of the family and all of them were muggles. Does anyone want to hold it?"

Dean immediately rolled off his bed and was next to Seamus in an instant. "Give me, give me, give me," He chanted with his hands held out. he had gotten so close that Seamus was forced to take a step back.

Seamus handed the sword to Dean who started to look at the blade from every angle. "What is this red stuff?" He ran his finger over one of the waves and examined it.

"I think that it is the blood of the people its slain, dying the blade." Dean immediately drew his finger back and held the sword out like it had bit him. Harry personally thought that was hogwash. He looked closer and found that the red metal was flush with the black metal. From what he could tell, it was just the forging processes that gave it that color.

Nevertheless, Dean was done looking at the blade, so Harry took it and looked it over. The first thing that he noticed was that it was not a light blade. It may have been small, but it was almost as heavy as the sword of Gryffindor. He ran his hand over the guardless hilt and found a small catch in the notch on the bottom. He touched it and the blade shuddered for a moment before stopping. Looking very closely, he could see that the two separate blades of metal had come apart slightly, but the years of poor maintenance had caused it to stop whatever it was doing. Harry was no expert with how blades were forged, but even he could tell how well made it was despite the wear on the weapon.

The metal showed very little sign of degradation from the years of disuse. A good cleaning and a couple hours of work and the blade would be as good as new. Harry gripped the hilt of the sword and held it for a moment to get a feel of how heavy the sword would be to wield one handed and he was surprised. The sword was balanced quite well and fit in his hand like it was meant for him.

Harry eventually handed it off to Ron, who was looking at the blade with undisguised want. As he handed it over, Ron pulled it back carelessly and the blade gashed his palm causing Harry to cry out in pain and covered the bleeding gash with his hand.  
The redhead set the blade down and started profusely apologizing to Harry who just waved him off. It was strange, the moment the blade cut into his skin, it felt like molten steel was poured into the wound. Just a moment later, it was just a normal cut, nothing that he had not felt before.  
Neville came over and looked at the wound before paling at the blood. "Do you need to go see Madam Pomfrey?" asked the shy boy.

Harry immediately shook his head while fishing his wand out of his robes. "No, I want to stay as far away from that place this year as I can," He did not want to have to deal with the woman that cowed even Dumbledore. "Could you imagine what she'd say if I go on the first day of school? She'd skin me alive! I learned some charms for this kind of thing."

One did not get into as many life or death situations as Harry did without learning some healing magic, so he pulled out his wand and cast a small healing charm on his hand. The magic went into the cut and sewed the flesh closed, the only proof that he had been cut was a small thin scar where it had been.

After getting assurance that Harry was fine, Ron went back to the blade and started looking over it with awe, though some was tempered by his accident. Harry watched in silence as the blade was passed around the room, the only one not looking over it was the passive Neville, who was satisfied watching everyone else play around with the blade.

The entire time that the blade was being passed around, Seamus was talking about the blade's history. Harry was pretty sure that he was making it up as he went along though. The boy was prone to exaggerating facts a lot and he was sure that the little story about the blade coming from a different world was just made up in a second to spice up his tale. It didn't help that he contradicted himself four times in as many seconds. The blade was forged by dwarves, but also by goblins, but also by blind men. It was tempered in a magic spring or in the blood of it's enemies, or whatever he could think of at the moment. In reality it was probably just some showpiece that he had found.

Several minutes later saw the blade placed back into the box and put away inside Seamus' trunk. All of the boys in the room were sound asleep, if sound asleep meant that the twin snores that would give a chainsaw a headache filled the room, it was as if Ron and Seamus were competing against each other for the loudest noises they could make asleep. If it was not for years of practice, none of the others would have been able to sleep.

However, one occupant in the room was not sleeping well and that occupant was Harry Potter. He was laying in bed, tossing and turning every other second and alternated between shivering and breaking out in a sweat. The nightmare, because dream was nowhere close to what he was having, tormented the teen for hours through the night.

Harry's eyes snapped open as he shot through the air and off of his bed. His sleep addled mind could not make sense about what had happened as he swung his wand around, looking for someone that was out to get him.

"You alright, mate?" Ron looked at him through sleep ladened eyes.

Harry took a deep breath to calm his racing heart and nodded, "Just a dream I guess,"

"About what?"

"I don't know," Harry said in surprise, just a moment ago he knew that something had happened in his dream, but now he could not even recall what it could have been to cause him to leap from his bed.

"If it was about spiders, kill a few for me, aye?" He mumbled sleepily as he rolled over and threw his blanket over his head. The chainsaw revved up moments later.

Harry remained sitting on the floor. While he could not remember the dream, he knew that it was not one of the usual ones he had. It did not feature Voldemort and Wormtail in any way, that much was for certain. Those dreams were much too clear to forget like this. However, for some reason, he felt like he was missing something.

As he sat there, he made a sound of disgust at how absolutely drenched in sweat he was, as if he had just finished a grueling Quidditch match and then fought a cerberus in celebration. The next moment he found that he felt as if he had done just that. All of his muscles ached and moving around was no walk in the park. It was not the first time that he had woken up like this before, but it was the first time that he could not remember the reason behind it.

He peeled the sticky sweat stained shirt off his skin in disgust and quickly rushed to get to the showers. He was relieved to find that he was the first one there and could take a moment to ease under the showerhead without having to fight the other more rambunctious members of Gryffindor for a spot. As much as he liked the others, he was not quite as willing to fight over every little thing like they were. Physical contact still made him uncomfortable after so many years of living with the Dursleys. Physical contact in the form of pushing and shoving were much more uncomfortable.

The magically hot water flowed over his muscles soothing them and washing away his aches and pains. When he finally opened his eyes and looked down, he noticed a red tint to the water that was washing away. He twisted and turned, looking for the wound until he felt a slight sting on his legs. The pain had been so minute that he had not been able to feel it until he had recognized that it was there.

The wound was not too bad, but Harry had no idea how he had gotten it. The long scratch was ragged as if he had scraped it against a stone rather than cut it in his sleep and for the life of him, he could not figure out what caused it. He sent a quick healing charm at it and sighed in relief as the small pain left.

He quickly forgot about the wound, he rationalized that he had probably gotten it at the quidditch world cup and had forgotten to heal it and it just reopened while he slept. It wasn't the first time something like that had happened.

Finally finished with his shower, he cast a quick _tempus_ charm and found that it was still a couple hours before he normally got up. He could not go back to sleep though. He was wide awake now and nothing was going to change that.

Deciding to get ahead with his studies for once and not flail around in desperation for the rest of the year, he cracked open his defense book. Besides, Moody looked like the kind of man that expected everyone to have already finished their books and was able to perfectly cast what was in it by their first class. Hermione would love it.

It was also defense, so that was another plus for him to read the book. Without Ron bugging him to play quidditch or chess with him or Hermione pressuring him to study, he found that he could lose himself in his books. It reminded him of back when he used to frequent the library in Little Whinging, mostly he went when Dudley was tried to play some "Harry Hunting" with his friends.

He had spent a lot of time in the library.

Back then he used to love reading and escaping into books where he would not be tormented by his relatives or other school children. He did not know when he had stopped loving books though. Between all the magic, school, and life threatening situations, he just stopped reading in his spare time.

The defense book was interesting for a change. It was rather dry compared to some of the other course books, but the sheer amount of information covered in the book captured his attention. Unlike the other books he had read, this one was about more than just spell casting and mentioned non magical ways of fighting off the dark.

Harry was sure that he would have hated it if he had been with Ron when he first opened the book though. That boy had the ability to whine about anything that was not quidditch, chess, or food. However, his eyes were opened that he knew very little about combat when he had seen all those death eaters at the world cup. The only spells that came to mind were harmless spells that could not do anything, but momentarily stall any competent wizard.

He could have used the fact that he was only in Hogwarts for three years as an excuse for his lack of knowledge, but he knew that it was just that, an excuse for his shortcomings. He had survived most of his yearly adventures on luck alone and it was time to change that. Knowing his track record, he was due for something to try and kill him soon anyways and he'd like to get a head up on this one before it was too late.

He was a fourth of the way through the defense book when he was shaken out of his reading trance.

Around him was a frowning Ron and a smiling Hermione. He looked around in confusion and found that the common room was bustling with people. A quick time charm and he found that he had been reading for almost two and a half hours and had not noticed it.

"What are you doing, mate?" Ron said "Class has not even started and you are already reading your books. Are you turning into another Hermione?"

Ron yipped in pain as Hermione hit his shoulder. "I am right here, Ronald!" She huffed, "I, for one, think that it is marvelous that Harry is starting on his school work early,"

Harry snapped his book shut and got in between to two of them before they could begin another row. It was too early to listen to the two of them fight like an old married couple.

"I just woke up early and decided to read a bit," Harry shrugged as he guided them out of the common room.

Hermione looked worried, "Was it another nightmare?" She asked quickly.

"No," replied Harry, "I actually don't know what I dreamed about."

"Are you alright? Does your scar hurt?" She asked quickly, "Do you need to see Madam Pomfrey?"

"No!" Harry replied loudly, before he realized what he had done and calmed himself."No Madam Pomfrey. I am fine. It was probably just a bad dream or something."

The bookworm breathed a sigh of relief while Ron rolled his eyes.

The three of them fell into an easy conversation on their way down the hall. Ron was completely fixated on the Triwizard Tournament and discussing how he would try to break the age line to try and get to the goblet of fire. Hermione scolded him and told him in great detail how it was a bad idea and how he would never be able to break through Dumbledore's wards. Harry allowed the words to wash over him as they made a beeline to their table.

He regretted not getting enough sleep now that he was at the table. When he was tired, he got snappish and his already short temper shortened even further. He had to hold himself back from yelling at an annoying first year who was enamored with his fame. He knew that it was not their fault that they were in awe of him, but his lack of sleep had him at the edge of his patience with the hero worshiping eleven year olds.

"Today's not bad... outside all morning," said Ron, who was running his finger down the Monday column of his schedule. "Herbology with the Hufflepuffs and Care of Magical Creatures... damn it, we're still with the Slytherins,"

"Language, Ron," Hermione replied so fast that it must have been instinctual at this point. Harry snickered at the scowl on Ron's face.

"Double Divination this afternoon," Harry groaned, looking down. His day had just gotten ten times worse.

Divination was his least favorite subject, apart from Potions. Professor Trelawney kept predicting his death; which, like anyone else, he found extremely annoying. There is only so many times someone could die before it becomes ludicrous. The rest of the house had a bingo game going about how he would die with a new one each month. From what he heard, the Weasley twins even had a reward for the winners.

"You should have given it up like me, shouldn't you?" said Hermione briskly, buttering herself some toast. "Then you'd be doing something sensible like Arithmancy."

Ron made several faces as she said that, but Harry could not help, but agree with her. He had gotten nothing from Divinations and would have rather spent his time in arithmancy, but it was too late for him to transfer.

The rest of the day proceeded like any other, as if summer break was just a weekend instead of a couple months. Sprout had them working in the dirt already and Hagrid had a new animal for them all to take care of. Though the blast-ended skrewts were new and for once, he agreed with Malfoy that they should all be eradicated before they hurt someone too much.

Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the day until Malfoy came skipping up to Ron with a paper in hand and insult on his lips. The sneer on his face was colored with malicious glee that was mirrored by the cruel smiles on the boys large friends.

"Weasley! Hey, Weasley!" The peroxide blonde called from across the hall, putting on a show to get everyone's attention.

"What?" said Ron shortly.

"Your dad's in the paper!" said Malfoy, brandishing a copy of the Daily Prophet and speaking very loudly, so that everyone in the packed entrance hall could hear clearly.

"Listen to this!" He called before snapping the paper open in a flourish. "'Further Mistakes at the Ministry of Magic.

"'It seems as though the Ministry of Magic's troubles are not yet at an end, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Recently under fire for its poor crowd control at the Quidditch World Cup, and still unable to account for the disappearance of one of its witches, the Ministry was plunged into fresh embarrassment yesterday by the antics of Arnold Weasley, of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office.'"

Malfoy looked up with a grin on his face. "Imagine them not even getting his name right, Weasley. It's almost as though he's a complete nonentity, isn't it?" he crowed. His two brutes both let out twin belly laughs. Everyone in the entrance hall was listening now. Malfoy straightened the paper and read on:

"'Arnold Weasley, who was charged with possession of a flying car two years ago, was yesterday involved in a tussle with several Muggle law-keepers over a number of highly aggressive dustbins. Mr. Weasley appears to have rushed to the aid of "Mad-Eye" Moody, the aged ex-Auror who retired from the Ministry when no longer able to tell the difference between a handshake and attempted murder. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Weasley found, upon arrival at Mr. Moody's heavily guarded house, that Mr. Moody had once again raised a false alarm. Mr. Weasley was forced to modify several memories before he could escape from the policemen, but refused to answer Daily Prophet questions about why he had involved the Ministry in such an undignified and potentially embarrassing scene.'

"And there's even a picture, Weasley!" said Malfoy, flipping the paper over and holding it up. "A picture of your parents outside their house - if you can call it a house! Your mother could do with losing a bit of weight, couldn't she?"

Ron was shaking and so was Harry. The lack of sleep had frayed his temper and to hear the woman that had all, but adopted him spoken about in such manner infuriated him. "Shut your mouth, Malfoy," Harry said as he motioned for Hermione to drag Ron away, both of them knew he did not have enough discipline to not rise to Malfoy's bait.

While she was doing that, Malfoy had focused on Harry's eyes.

"Oh yeah, you were staying with them this summer, weren't you, Potter?" sneered Malfoy. "So tell me, is his mother really that porky, or is it just the picture?"

A slight grunt showed that Hermione could not hold Ron back completely and a blur of red crossed Harry's peripherals. His hand shot out and caught a hold of Ron's trailing collar. With strength he did not know he possessed, he was able to stop Ron dead in his tracks before pulling him back and away from Malfoy. He put too much energy into it though and Ron almost fell as he stumbled back.

"That is enough, Malfoy," Harry said, turning to him. "It is not like you are one to talk with your mother. Let me ask you, is that pinched look because she bit into a lemon or because she is around you and your father all the time?"

Malfoy's pale face went slightly pink."Don't you dare insult my mother, Potter."

"Then shut up about others, huh?" said Harry, he turned away, but an odd buzz was felt on the back of his head. Along with the buzz came a feeling. Harry decided to follow through with whatever he felt and ducked left.

A bang sounded and white hot pain lanced through his face as the cutting curse gouged a line from below his eye to just before his nose. Rather than go for his wand, he let the instincts that he thought he had forgotten years ago, take control and spun on the balls of his feet, using his momentum to swing around quickly.

Harry leapt across the distance separating them and swung a fist at Malfoy's surprised face, the blonde's eyes widening his surprise, and the next moment he hit the ground with a cry of pain. His wand flew into the crowd as he grabbed his nose.

Before he covered it, Harry noted with savage glee that the boy's nose was smashed and most likely broken. The boy did not get up to continue the fight he started, instead Malfoy curled into a ball as he tried to hide his hot tears from everyone around him.

Harry felt a sharp throbbing pain from his hand and found that he had broken one of his knuckles. He hissed in pain as he straightened out his finger. It was nothing that a quick episkey could not fix though and while he was at it, he healed his cheek.

"Harry!" He was pulled out of motions of healing himself by his frantic friend who had been trying to get his attention. Hermione looked indignant that Harry had fought while Ron was behind her looking at Harry with a mix of awe and worry. The latter outweighing the former. "Are you okay? He did not get your eye, did he?"

"It's already gone, Hermione," Harry said, tapping the light scar under his eye that was already fading.

She breathed a sigh of relief before drawing herself up and he knew that he was about to get the ranting of a lifetime. He really regretted not getting enough sleep. If he had, then he could have reigned in his temper like he normally did.

The hall suddenly went silent as an asymmetric step came from the other side of the room. The clop of a wooden leg steadily came closer as people stepped aside. It was not long until Mad-eye Moody was standing before them, looking back and forth to try and determine what happened.

"What happened here?" Moody eventually said, getting a feel of the situation. His magical eye swinging around nonstop since he had arrived.

"Potter attacked Malfoy," Crabbe answered slowly.

Moody looked around the room for answers and found that all of them were nodding their heads at what the large teen was saying.

"That slimy git tried to kill Harry when he was walking away!" Ron shouted, pointing at a deep scratch in the wall that was so clean it must have come from magic. "If Harry had not moved, then that curse would have taken off his head!"

"Did he get you?" Moody's deep and gravelly voice asked.

"No," Harry said, "He mostly missed,"

"So why did you punch him? You have a good wand right there in your pocket," asked the scarred man.

"It was faster," Harry muttered. "I don't have a holster...yet."

"Good," Moody said, causing everyone's eyes to snap to him in surprise. "Always use every tool at your disposal! You never know what you will have when an enemy strikes! CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" He barked, startling everyone. "Get back here!"

Harry looked around, bewildered at the sudden order, "What?"

"Not you," Moody said and spun with his wand in hand. A sweep and jab had Malfoy's retreating body shift into a ferret. "Him."

Moody started to limp toward Crabbe, Goyle, and the ferret, which gave a terrified squeak and took off, streaking toward the dungeons.

"I don't think so!" Moody yelled, pointing his wand at the ferret again and it flew ten feet into the air, fell with a smack to the floor, and then bounced upward once more.

"I don't like people who attack when their opponent's back's turned," Moody growled as the ferret bounced higher and higher, squealing in pain. "Stinking... cowardly... scummy thing to do..."

The ferret flew through the air, its legs and tail flailing helplessly.

"Never... do... that... again..." said Moody, speaking each word as the ferret hit the stone floor and bounced upward again. "It is something only a no-good death eater would do!"

"Professor Moody!" said a shocked voice.

Professor McGonagall was coming down the marble staircase with her arms full of books.

"Hello, Professor McGonagall," Moody responded calmly while bouncing the ferret higher still until dropping it straight to the floor.

"What... what are you doing?" said Professor McGonagall, her eyes following the bouncing ferret's progress through the air.

"Teaching," said Moody. Harry noted the sneer that adorned the strange professors face.

"Teaching? Moody, is that a student?" shrieked Professor McGonagall, the books spilling out of her arms onto an unfortunate student's foot.

"Yep," said Moody happily.

"No!" cried Professor McGonagall, running down the stairs and pulling out her wand; a moment later, with a loud snapping noise, Draco Malfoy had reappeared, lying in a heap on the floor with his sleek blond hair all over his now bright pink face. The blood leaking from his nose coated his jaw.

"Moody, we never use Transfiguration as a punishment!" said Professor McGonagall angrily, a slight brogue tinting her voice. "Surely Professor Dumbledore told you that?"

"He might've mentioned it, yeah," said Moody, scratching his chin unconcernedly, "but I thought a good sharp shock-"

"We give detentions, Moody! Or speak to the offender's Head of House!" McGonagall screeched at the man, "We do not injure students!"

"I'll do that, then," said Moody, staring at Malfoy with great dislike.

Malfoy, whose pale eyes were still watering with pain and humiliation, looked malevolently up at Moody and muttered something in which the words "my father" were distinguishable. He wiped his nose of the blood pouring out of it, doing little more than smearing it across his cheeks and clothing.

"Oh yeah?" said Moody quietly, limping forward a few steps, the dull clunk of his wooden leg echoing around the hall. "Well, I knew your father, boy. You tell him Moody's keeping a close eye on his son, you tell him that from me. Now, your Head of House is Snape, is it?"

"Yes," said Malfoy resentfully.

"Another old friend," growled Moody. "I've been looking forward to a chat with old Snape. Come on, you."

He seized Malfoy's upper arm and marched him off toward the dungeons.

Professor McGonagall stared anxiously after them for a few moments, then waved her wand at her fallen books, causing them to soar up into the air and back into her arms. She briskly walked off in the same direction she came from.

"Don't talk to me," Ron said quietly to Harry and Hermione as they sat down at the Gryffindor table a few minutes later, surrounded by excited talk on all sides about what had just happened.

"Why not?" said Hermione in surprise.

"Because I want to fix that in my memory forever," said Ron, his eyes closed and an uplifted expression on his face. It looked like he had briefly experienced nirvana. "Draco Malfoy, the amazing bloody bouncing ferret," he whispered to himself.

Harry and Hermione both laughed, but Hermione had at least tried to hide it.

"He could have really hurt Malfoy, though," she said, but Harry could tell that it was mostly because she felt obligated to. "It was good, really, that Professor McGonagall stopped it-"

"Hermione!" said Ron furiously, his eyes snapping open again, "You're ruining the best moment of my life!"

Hermione made an impatient noise while Harry smiled with his friend. She began shoveling food into her mouth as fast as she could.

"Are you going to the library again?" Ron asked as if he dreaded the answer.

She nodded her head, "I have loads to do," She said as she stood up, "I'll see you guys later,"

"Wait," Harry called out as he took one last bite of his food, "I'm coming with you,"

Ron looked like he had just been struck. "What are you doing mate?"

"I want to finish up the defense textbook and look some stuff up," Ron grumbled in reply. Harry looked up and noticed that Hermione had a happy glint in her eye that stayed there the entire way out of the hall.

"Why are you coming with me?" Hermione asked, "I know that it is not just because you want to read your textbook,"

Harry was silent for a moment. "I realized something earlier," Harry said slowly, "I have no idea how I am still alive."

Hermione opened her mouth to argue, but Harry cut her off. "Hermione," he said, "You know better than anyone what kind of dangers that we have gotten into over the years and here I am, barely scraping by in half of my classes. I need to get better so that the next time someone tries to kill me, they won't succeed,"

"How do you know that someone would try something?"

"Because every single year that I have been here, I have almost died several times and gotten out by being lucky," Harry said, "Fluffy, the troll, Quirrell, the basilisk, Voldemort, Werewolf, dementors, others. Hell, Malfoy nearly killed me like twenty minutes ago. I don't want to rely on luck forever though, so I am going to read through my defense book and find a couple other books that I could check out."

Hermione was quiet as they walked down the halls. "I'll help you," She eventually responded, surprising him.

"What? I thought that you had your own classes to deal with,"  
"I finished reading all my textbooks before I got on the train," She admitted, "I was going to research house elves, but this is more important than that at the moment."

Harry smiled happily at his friend as they made their way to the library where no one, not even Ravenclaws, were studying.

His bed was too soft and inviting, Harry determined as he fell into it. He and Hermione had scoured the library for almost all the combat related books and had quickly amassed a list that contained so many books that it rivaled even Hermione's own list of studying guides. He refused to give up and had decided that he would read each and every single one of them and master everything that he could. They only stopped when they were kicked out of the library by a disgruntled Madam Pince. Maybe staying late on the first day of school when the librarian normally got to relax was a bit much.

Harry closed his eyes, only to open them what seemed to be a couple seconds later, shooting out of his bed with his wand swinging back and forth, looking for enemies. The tip of his wand glowed red and flickered as his flame making charm threatened to be expelled.

He had no idea why he felt like he was in so much danger, but for a moment it felt like he was wandering through the forbidden forest without a wand.

This time he did not have Ron wake up and ask him what was going on. Everyone else was safely tucked in their bed with no worry.

Harry stumbled backwards onto his bed and immediately seized up as his back exploded in pain. He forced down a scream as he rolled over and got up. He stumbled to the bathroom and threw off his shirt, careful to not irritate his back anymore than it seemed to already be.

In the dim light of the bathroom, he could see that there was a long scratch straight down his back, as if he had been attacked with a cutting curse or a large animal just several moments ago.

Then images flashed through his head. He saw a city with streets filled to the brim with coffins, blood staining everything like a crimson paint. He saw brief clips of tall mutated men that looked like they were trapped between transforming into a werewolf and remaining human. The sight of the scar on his back that was tinting the floor red had him think of one of those men chasing him and slashing at him with a rusty sabre before he escaped him. Beyond those few images, he could not remember anything else about what had happened. Harry sat down on one of the benches in the shower and removed the rest of his clothing, looking for any other injuries. He found that the bottom of his feet were red and raw from running so much, but as he had yesterday, he was able to cast several healing charms and fix all his wounds.

He tried to think of how this could have happened, but he had no idea. He briefly entertained the thought of going to Hermione with his problems, but then dismissed the idea. Hermione would likely drive herself to ruin trying to figure out what had happened to him and he refused to do that to her.

His new injuries did bring new light to his leg from the other day. It was possible that something of a similar nature happened before, but this time he could remember some of it, even if it was just a couple snapshots and feelings of terror and desperation.

A closer examination of his body revealed that he had gained a small bit more muscle than he had before or he had lost what little fat he had gotten with the Weasley's. That brought up a dozen new questions, none with answers though. He washed the blood off of himself and changed into a new pair of clothing, throwing the bloody ones in the laundry.

Harry did not even have to look at the time to find that he had woken up earlier than before.

He grabbed a couple books from his trunk and went down to the common room and began reading again. He quickly immersed himself in his book so that he would not have to deal with not being able to tell what was wrong with him. He finished off his defense book and immediately opened another one, not letting his mind wander for even a moment.

When everyone had slowly trickled their way down the steps, Harry closed his books and went with his best friends to breakfast, making sure to keep his book on hand so that whenever he had downtime, he could read it and, hopefully, ignore the questions nagging at him.

The entire day proceeded without incident, the only issue arising was when he had potions, but he had other things on his mind that were more important than Snape at the moment. Harry went to bed late that night, dreading what he would find in his nightmarish dreams and what would happen to him when he woke.

Harry woke up again, this time he was not able to jump out of bed. His leg felt like he had been stabbed and when he pulled up his pant leg and found that he had a deep puncture wound on the back of his calf. Any higher and he would have been hamstrung and would have had to go see Pomfrey which would bring about more questions that he did not have answers to. As Harry healed himself, he remembered the nightmare. This time he could see several different streets of the city and everything was crystal clear. He still had no idea where he was dreaming of. What he did know was that the dream had taken place over two or more days if his memory served him right. In any case, it felt like he had been running for two or more days and he really needed to fix his leg.

As Harry cleaned his clothing and wrapped a bandage around the rapidly healing wound, he got up to shower as was becoming routine recently. He would heal his wounds, wait for them to finish before cleaning the sweat and blood off of his body.

Gazing at the bandages, he wished that he could go talk to someone about it, but he knew in the pit of his stomach that it would not accomplish anything. The best that he could do was research it on his own and hopefully stumble across mention of what may cause his dreams to come true. Harry wrote a note as he grabbed a book from his trunk and stuck it to Ron's bed so that he would not be worried when he found Harry missing in the morning.  
He read through more of his defense book and practiced some of the spells against the blank wall in the back of the common room. When curfew was lifted, Harry sprinted down to the library and immediately looked for several books on dream magic and curses. He spent the next several hours engrossed in his books, but in the end, none of them had the answers he was searching for. The dream magic was a dead end because most of it had to do with divination and interpreting dreams into predictions for the future. The curses were more informative. He found several that may apply to his situation, but there was always something missing from them that was enough for him to dismiss them.

The torment curse was the closest and would explain his dreams, but they would not explain the injuries he received while the mind-body curse would explain the injuries without the dreams. He supposed that he could have been placed under both, but that would make no sense since he had not been in contact with anything that would give him the curse. The closest thing that he could think of was the sword that Seamus brought in, but he had held it. There was no magic in the blade that he could feel and he was not the only one that had messed with it. These curses were very general and if he had touched the blade and gotten it then everyone would have been cursed as well.

He decided to give it a week or two before he brought it to Dumbledore's attention. If the dreams did not stop by then, he would ask him to help him.

Harry casted the time charm and his eyes widened. If he did not get moving, he would be late for Moody's class, a class that he did not want to miss.

Harry made it to the classroom was barely any time to spare. He took a seat next to Hermione, just as Moody stepped in the classroom. The frizzy haired girl looked over and saw the bags under his eyes and would have commented on it, if not for Moody stomping down the aisle with his wooden peg leg.

"You can put those away," he growled, stomping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them."

They returned the books to their bags, Ron looked particularly excited about not having to read. Harry just felt tired. He had not gotten more than seven hours of sleep over the last three days and it was catching up with him.

Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled gray hair out of his twisted and scarred face, and began to call out names, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixing upon each student as he or she answered.

"Right then," he said, when the last person had declared themselves present, "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling Dark creatures. You've covered boggarts, Red Caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, Kappas, and werewolves, is that right?"

There was a general murmur of assent.

"But you're behind, very behind, on dealing with curses," said Moody with a frown. It was a horrifying thing when coupled with all his scars. "So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark-"

"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out.

Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron, who looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled. The first time Harry and most people in the room had seen him do so. The effect was to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was nevertheless good to know that he was capable of something as friendly as smile. Ron looked deeply relieved that he was not the target of the man ire.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "Your father helped me out a few days ago with a small mishap. Aye, I'm just staying the one year. A special favor to Dumbledore... One year teaching you lot, and then back to my quiet retirement. Teaching wasn't really what I saw myself doing after the war."

He gave a harsh laugh, and then clapped his gnarled hands together. The class jumped suddenly as his mouth twisted into a parody of a smile once more.

"So straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you counter curses and leave it at that.

"I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it till then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves, he reckons you can cope, and I say, the sooner you know what you're up against, the better. How are you supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen? A wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about to do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful." Moody said as he paced around the room. "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" He startled several of the students that had not been paying attention. Several girls even yelped in fright as their heads shot up to stare at the strange professor.

"This lesson would have been later in the year, but bah. To hell with that, the sooner you know what you are up against, the better I say." Moody groused as he limped to the front of the class and collapsed into his chair. "Do any of you know the most punishable curses by the wizarding law?"

Several people's hands raised slowly in the air, including Ron's for once.

"Yes, Mr. Weasley," Moody pointed at Ron. Though his magical eye was still sweeping the class.

"Er," said Ron tentatively, "My dad told me about one... Is it called the Imperius Curse, or something?"

"Ah, yes," said Moody appreciatively. "Your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse. Gave everyone a lot of trouble."

Moody got up from his chair heavily to his mismatched feet, opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. Harry saw Ron recoil slightly with a squeak of fear. Everyone else watched in fascination as Moody grabbed one and put it in his hand.

He showed it to everyone and Harry could swear that Ron was one step away from passing out. "Imperio," The professor incanted and jabbed his wand at the spider. Even without a flash of light or anything signifying that the spell was activated, everyone knew that it had. The spider had ceased its struggles and had stood docilely in Moody's hand.

Suddenly, the spider leapt from Moody's hand on a fine thread of silk and began to swing backward and forward as though on a trapeze. It stretched out its legs rigidly, then did a backflip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. Moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.

Harry felt sick as he watched the spider go through the routine and start waltzing on the desk. Harry could not imagine what it would be like to be completely under the control of another being. Everyone else besides Hermione, Ron, and Moody giggled at the silly sight that the spider made. Hermione seemed to share his sentiments while Ron was just terrified of the large spiders.

"Think it's funny, do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?" The laughter instantly silenced.

"Total control," said Moody solemnly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats... Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse. We had to determine if those who committed crimes were actually at fault or just acting. Trying to sort the monsters from the innocents... an almost impossible job.

"The Imperius Curse can be fought though, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he barked, and everyone jumped. "And don't you forget that, it can save your life one day,"

"Anyone else? Another illegal curse?"

Many of the hands that had raised eagerly in the first place had dropped. Only Hermione's, Harry's and surprisingly; Neville's were raised.

Mad-eye's mad eye directed itself to Neville and he pointed to the boy.

"Yes?" Moody prompted.

"There's one..." Neville hesitantly said as if surprised that he was answering, "The cruciatus curse,"

Moody was looking very intently at Neville, "Your name's Longbottom?" he said, his magical eye swooping down to check the register again.

Neville nodded nervously, but Moody did not follow up the question, apparently satisfied with the answer. Turning back to the class at large, he reached into the jar for the next spider and placed it upon the desktop, where it remained motionless, apparently too scared to move.

"The Cruciatus Curse," said Moody, pointing his wand at the spider. "It needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea."

The spider grew to ten times its size and Ron apparently had enough and had pushed himself as far away from the spider as he could. His face had paled to a chalk white and Harry was surprised that he had not passed out.

"Crucio," Moody snarled, the amount of anger in his voice shook the classroom. However what followed disturbed them even more.

With a flash of bright red, the spider's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. No sound came from it, but Harry was sure that if it could have given voice, it would have been screaming.

As he watched, several memories poured into his head. The image of a man writhing on the ground as his body cracked and broke as he became a wolf filled his mind. He could hear the cracking of bones and screams of pain as his body tortured him. Harry dropped his head into his hands to try and block the unwanted intrusions. However his memories expanded from the one man being torn apart and put together as a monster to watching crows the size of wolves pick apart half insane men and women as werewolves howled while they caught their prey. It was like the memories were sitting behind a dam, trying to break through and some of them got past with the help of witnessing the crucio.

Harry heard Hermione scream something at the teacher. He did not understand what she had said, but it was enough to snap him out of his unwanted memories. The black haired student looked up in time to see Moody start talking.

"Pain," said Moody softly. "You don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse... That one was very popular once too." He finished quietly as he reflected on his past.

"Right... anyone know any others?"

Harry did not have the energy to raise his head and look around the room. "Yes?" said Moody, looking to his side at Hermione..

"Avada Kedavra," Hermione whispered. Several people looked uneasily around at her, including Ron.

"Ah," said Moody, another slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra... the Killing Curse."

'Not the worst,' Harry wanted to say as he watched Moody grab the other spiders. The imperious curse was so much worse. To lose control of one's body and forced to do even the most despicable acts was so much more terrifying than death ever was. The fact that you could be used against your will to commit atrocities with just a single word scared him more than the endless oblivion could.

Moody put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the third spider scuttled frantically around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody's fingers, but he trapped it, and placed it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface.

"Avada Kedavra!" Moody roared. His voice much deeper and wrathful than any of the spells before, his lips twisted into a snarl of fury. Harry couldn't tell which was worse, his smile or this.

A bright flash of emerald green filled the room for a moment. That was it. There was no great sound or feeling. All that showed that one of the most evil spells in history had just been cast was the spider curled around itself on the desk before lying still.

The defense professor swept the spider onto the floor and began talking to the stunned class. "Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me."

Moody turned to face Harry along with everyone else in the class. Harry stared ahead, not paying attention to any of it. They noticed a slight tremble in his shoulders and just attributed it to witnessing the curse like everyone else. They could not possibly know the thoughts that were dancing around in his head.

He had just witnessed how his parents had died. He had to wonder if it was as quick and clean as it was for the spider. He wondered if they had died that quickly with only a green light to herald their end or if they had fought and just got caught by a different spell. He did not even know how his father died and the only thing he knew was that his mother was a victim of the same curse that he had just watched.

Moody was speaking again, from a great distance, it seemed to Harry. With a massive effort, he pulled himself back to the present and listened to what Moody was saying.

"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it along with meaning. You could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed. But that doesn't matter. I'm not here to teach you how to do it. Now, if there's no countercurse, why am I showing you? Because you've got to know... You've got to appreciate what the worst is to understand just what you may have to fight. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he roared, and the whole class jumped again.

"Now... those three curses - Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus - are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That's what you're up against. That's what I've got to teach you to fight. You need preparing. You need arming. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance." Everyone braced for him to shout again, but he sat heavily in his chair. "Get out your quills and copy this down."

They spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses. Harry had trouble trying to concentrate on the lesson after what he had seen in his dreams. His notes were incoherent even to him and no matter how much he tried to pay attention he could not keep track of what was being said. No one spoke until the bell rang, but when Moody had dismissed them and they had left the classroom, a torrent of talk burst forth. Most people were discussing the curses in awed voices.

"Hurry up," Hermione said tensely to Harry and Ron. Harry followed behind the girl out of the classroom, massaging his head and trying to push the images that had been circling his mind out of the way. There had been a slight pause as he witnessed the killing curse, but they had come back with a vengeance minutes later.

He could still hear the sound of bones breaking and skin tearing as if he was there watching it happen instead of standing in Hogwart's halls. The sounds filled his ears until it was all that he could hear and the sight of the blood flying blocked out everything else. He could smell the cloying scent of the dead that littered the street and feel the warmth in the air that signaled the changing seasons. It reminded him of the hot breath of the beasts that roamed the hellish nightmare that he could not escape.

He followed behind Hermione listlessly, too lost to notice that they were heading towards Neville. He ran into the back of Ron when the redhead stopped in front of him. The touch was enough to bring him back to reality for the most part.

"Neville?" Hermione said gently. Her voice felt so far away. It was like he was at the other side of an abnormally long tunnel.

"Oh hello," An abnormally high voice responded which took Harry a moment to place as Neville's. "Interesting lesson, wasn't it? I wonder what's for dinner, I'm - I'm starving, aren't you?"

"Neville, are you alright?" said Hermione.

"Oh yes, I'm fine," Neville gabbled in the same unnaturally high voice. "Very interesting dinner - I mean lesson - what's for eating?"

Harry swayed into Ron for a moment before steadying himself against the wall. Ron looked to him in surprise, noticing his state for the first time.

"Oi, Harry...?"

But an odd clunking noise sounded behind them, and they turned to see Professor Moody limping toward them. When he spoke, it was in a much lower and gentler growl than they had yet heard.

"It's all right, sonny," he said to Neville. "Why don't you come up to my office? Come on. We can have a cup of tea."

Neville looked even more frightened at the prospect of tea with Moody. He neither moved nor spoke. Moody turned his magical eye upon Harry.

"You alright, are you, Potter?"

Harry remained silent, he looked at Moody for the first time since he arrived. The screams had yet to recede and he couldn't focus on the man in front of him.

"Perhaps you should go lay down, Potter," Moody said, the voice cutting across the sounds he was imagining. His remaining eye locked onto Harry's own or more specifically, the bags that were under them.

Harry recoiled away from the man, "No!" He harshly replied to the man before he caught himself and cleared his throat. "No, professor. I'm fine,"

"Harry..." Hermione asked, putting her hand on his arm. Harry flinched away and stepped back.

"I'll be... somewhere if you need me," Harry muttered and made his way away from the group. He did not know what he was going to do, but what he did know was that he was not going to sleep anytime soon.

It did not take long for Harry to find a random abandoned room. Much of Hogwarts was abandoned since the school took up, at most, a fourth of the castle.

Harry used the spare time that he had now that he refused to sleep to research curses in what books he had and reading through his defense book. However, he could not stop the memories that had resurfaced from lingering in the back of his mind. He could only force himself not to pay attention to them.

As he read his head kept dipping down as his blinks slowly began to encompass seconds rather than instants. However every time Harry caught himself drifting off, he would jerk himself awake and pinch his arm sharply. The brief burst of pain woke him up. Unfortunately, the amount that it woke him up was slowly, but surely becoming smaller as the hours toiled along. He desperately dived into his books to find cures for curses. The problem was that, unlike curses cast with wands, curses enchanted to objects were notoriously difficult to remove and one needed to know exactly what the curse was because it was dangerous to mix and match counter curses. Harry had already tried the standard finite, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it did nothing to help him.

Harry checked the time and paled, he had completely missed curfew. It was almost two in the morning and he did not have his invisibility cloak with him. Harry decided to risk making his way back to the common room, than risk falling to sleep in a random room. If he fell asleep and dreamed, then there would be no way for him to get back to patch himself up.

Harry wished that he had one of the many different devices that he kept with him for his late night adventures. The cloak would be invaluable while the marauder's map would have been almost perfect. All he could do at the moment was stalk his way through the halls and try to be quiet.

As he was walking through the third floor corridors, he heard a soft footfall behind him and ducked into a dark alcove. He waited with baited breath for over a minute before a prefect had walked past his hiding place.

Harry did not pause to reflect as he walked quietly a couple meters behind the prefect to reach his next turn. He did not notice how his footfall had become near silent and he knew exactly where to place his feet so that he was as fast as possible while still maintaining a low profile. A flash of having to follow behind a wolf man briefly illuminated his mind and almost caused him to falter, but he had reached his turn and ran down it on silent feet.

The rest of the way to his dorm room was very much the same. When he heard someone coming, he would duck into a room or other hiding spot before quietly leaving and finding a new path.

Harry had reached the common room without an issue and found that he was the only one still up. He went up to his dorm and put away his books. He took a moment to sit down on his bed and realized his mistake a moment later as his eyes closed and he fell back on the bed.

(A/N:

Hello all, I have one thing to say and that is that I am terribly sorry about such a horrendously long hiatus between my posts. I want to say that I have a good reason for it, but I'll be completely honest, I don't. Back when I first wrote Nothing Left, I was pushing myself constantly to write and suddenly it was like all the fun was just taken out of it and all the constant feedback was nice, but I was a mess when I was writing it. I burnt out plain and simple and honestly, the thought of posting the chapters just made me anxious so I stopped altogether.

I wrote this story more than 4 years ago and it has just been sitting on my google drive since, I go back to it and edit it every now and again, but for the most part. It is mostly done with just some stuff that I need to touch up, but I just want to get it out there now. I can keep editing it forever and I have to just stop eventually and put it out there.

As to why I have been gone... life just happened, I graduated high school, went to college for a bit, found a job, found a girlfriend, got an apartment, got healthy, got unhealthy, got healthy again. You know just life happened. Time just slipped by and like that, it is 2019 and I haven't posted in years. I never really stopped writing, but I just stopped posting.

Special thanks to VaatiVidya's videos explaining the lore for this story, without him this would never have even happened. It had helped me greatly in puzzling together the story. )


	2. Chapter 2: Welcome to Yharnam

Last year, his biggest issue was that he thought that Sirius was after his life and that he would have to protect himself from the madman. A serious, but ultimately low risk fear since that would have meant that he could have successfully break into a highly secure school guarded by the worst demons imaginable along with some of the best witches and wizards in the country to get to him. It sounded so silly when he thought about it now, but at the time he was jumping at every shadow.

He wished that it was that simple now.

The sounds of death and agony had become a close companion to the ravenette second only to pain. His mind played through the previous two days that he had lived through in five hours. The memories were still fragmented, but only time would change that. At least he hoped so, the large holes in his memories were terrifying.

Were they memories though? He had dreams before and had completely forgotten them since. Back when he was at the Dursley's that was all that he would have. Somehow these were different though, they held weight when he thought about them.

Dreams shouldn't have more weight than the world around him, but they did. It was like this was the dream and the nightmares were real.

Harry got out of his bed for the twentieth time since he had begun his nightmares. It may have only been slightly more than a fortnight, but it felt like so much longer than that. He quickly pinpointed where his injuries were and healed them.

This time it wasn't so bad. Just a couple scratches on his arms and one on his stomach, nothing that he couldn't heal easily. He was getting better at casting the spells and the sight of blood no longer bothered him quite as much anymore.

He had long since given up on trying to figure out what the curse was. He had several running theories, but none of them had any proof to back them up. He refused to give up looking, but he was coming under the idea that the library did not hold information about his specific curse.

Initially, he was going to bring this to the professors, but he decided that it would be useless. He had run so many diagnostic spells on himself that he knew every single spell he had been put under for the last four years along with every single injury that he had ever suffered in his life. Even with all that knowledge of what was going on with his magic, he still could not find even a hint of what was going on with him. To tell the professors would subject himself to a battery of tests and extending hospital stay that would amount to nothing, but grief.

He didn't even know where he had gotten cursed. He hadn't done anything special and, as far as he knew, he was the only one that had begun having these realistic nightmares that were taking up his life.

His appearance had shifted dramatically since the onset of his curse. While he was never the most vain person, he did care about how he looked. He spent eleven years looking like a street urchin and now he could look like how he wanted and took advantage of that as much as he could. That had been thrown out the window. He scavenged what he could lay his hands on first and did not even attempt to make himself look more than the bare minimum of presentable.

His already thin frame had become even thinner. All the fat that may have existed had been erased in favor of muscles that he used in his dreams to flee from the beasts that hounded him or the men turned monster that saw him when he slipped up.

Pausing, he blew out a breath. He was losing weight because he was not able to stomach most of the rich food that Hogwarts served and what he could eat was hard to keep down. The muscles were showing because he had taken to exercising lightly to get his mind off of things. It was not because he was running from monsters in his dreams.

"Your up early, Harry." Neville drowsily said as he rolled out of bed and shuffled towards his trunk. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, fine." Harry dropped his shirt down once the cuts sealed and gathered up his things for the day. "I'll see you in class."

He fled before he had to answer any of the questions that the boy would obviously ask when he woke up a bit more. The abandoned classroom that he had commandeered for his own was only a couple minutes walk away and he quickly locked the door behind him to give him the privacy he needed.

He had defense for the day so he pulled out a couple of his supplementary textbooks that he picked up from the library and began reading them. Moody had impressed on everyone that he expected them all the read his defense book, regardless of whether he assigned reading or not. Harry just took a couple steps further and read on several other books that the man recommended.

Defense that day was rather interesting and not in a good way. This was the day that Moody would be testing everyone and teaching them how to reject an imperious curse. The day that he had been dreading since the man had mentioned it more than a week ago. Several students even petitioned Dumbledore to not let it happen, but the old man allowed it to happen anyways.

"Everyone line up!" Moody shouted and everyone nervously followed his orders and stood in line. "I'm sure you know what we are going over in class, if you didn't than you should pay more attention when someone tells you something. Let this be a lesson for you."

The man took a subtle deep breath and everyone braced themselves for what they knew would come. "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" He screamed loudly, a small smirk twisted his face when he saw how only a couple people flinched at the yell.

Harry and Hermione managed to luck out and edge towards the back of the class, but Ron was herded to the front away from them by Seamus and Dean.

"Willpower, ignore it, willpower, ignore it." Hermione muttered under her breath. That was the only information that they managed to find about overcoming the spell. Everything else was about how illegal it was and that only really powerful wizards could have compulsions last for more than five hours.

He reached back and grabbed her shaking hand. She latched onto his with a desperate grip, not once halting her panicked muttering. This was probably worse for her than it was him. The idea of losing control of himself sent shivers down his spine, but Hermione prided herself in her control. Over herself and her situation, and this was taking all of that away.

"Imperio!" Moody intoned, causing both of them to jump in fright. Crabbe's back straightened up and he stared forward was a blank face, more so than they had ever seen before. Between one moment and the next, the boy dropped to the ground and was quickly doing push ups at a rate that should have had the boy collapse in a puddle of fatigue in just a few seconds.

He didn't, he was still doing push ups when Goyle was forced forward next to his friend and put under the curse. The handstand and scarily competent navigation of the room with his eyes blindfolded by his upturned robes was so out of character that he almost drew laughter out of the class if they weren't even more horrified.

As the class progressed, Harry and Hermione became more and more anxious as they watched the rest of the class succumb to the spell's compulsion. He watched as Neville was able to backflip and cartwheel his way around the room. An ability that he did not have outside of the curse. He was not the only one. Dean sang the national anthem of Russia in russian without speaking a lick of the language while Lavender did jumping jacks on top of the table. The spell only lasted for ten minutes, less on several of them, but they didn't stop no matter the order until that unknown time limit.

"Potter, you're up," Moody eventually called, ending his spell on Lavender to get her out of the way. Hermione reluctantly let go of his hand and allowed him to step forward.

Despite wanting to be anywhere else, he stood in front of the man and waited for the spell to overcome him so that he could just get this over with. Hermione's whispers of "willpower, ignore it" completely fled his mind when he saw the wand start moving. All that was left was fear and anger. The professor raised his wand and softly said "Imperio."

Instantly, Harry felt the spell go to work. It was the most wonderful feeling. Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness.

All his worries from the last three weeks had disappeared and he no longer had to worry about his curse. Why would he have to worry about blood and death in his dreams? It didn't matter that he woke up with more and more scars from dreams that refused to remain as such. The monsters in his mind just weren't important anymore. The only thing that mattered was right in front of him.

He stood there feeling immensely relaxed, only dimly aware of everyone watching him. All he needed was a goal and he would be completely fulfilled.

"Jump on the desk," A quiet soothing voice said. Harry felt his mind relax and open up more as he prepared to jump.

A sharp piercing thought punched through the haze of the command. He didn't want to jump on the desk, why would he do something so silly in front of everyone else? With a hole in the fog over his mind, the rest of his consciousness flooded back quickly and started beating back the wretched curse.

Unfortunately, along with his awareness, came the memories that he had been subconsciously suppressing with all his being.

The only thing that had been protecting his mind from the months he had spent in his nightmares was the strength of his mind and with that resistance gone, the memories flowed in.

Everyone watching Harry were surprised when he stood there rather than listen to Moody and jump on the desk.

"Jump on the desk!" Moody ordered much more forcefully. Harry did not reply, instead he stiffened his back and stared ahead of himself without seeing anything. Moody waved his wand and removed the curse. "Now, that's more like it!" growled Moody. "Potter fought it... He fought it and beat it on his first try! There is no other defense to the imperius curse than willpower. If you know yourself and refuse to bend, then the spell cannot take hold."

Harry stood there staring ahead without saying a word. "Let's see if he can do it again," Moody said and cast the spell on Harry again. This time asking him to roll around the room like an armadillo. Harry did not even flinch like he had before.

"Twice in a row!" Moody called out to the class. "Learn something from this! I have met aurors that can't shrug off one imperio, say nothing of two!"

He could not hear or see anything beyond the sounds in his mind.

The silence he was portraying outwardly betrayed the turmoil he was feeling inside.

From the moment that his mind weakened, he felt most of the memories that he had been blocking out flood his mind. What he remembered from his dreams were nothing compared to what he had blocked out. The sewers full of the dead and dying. Abominations that dragged themselves along the flooded streets. Large brutish men that killed everything that they came across. Madmen wandering the streets, attacking anything and everything in their sights just to watch blood fly.

They were just dreams, but it felt like he had been there. The sights had been burned into his brain and were just as real as every other experience that he had in his life. Everything swarmed into his head. Every emotion that he had felt at those time overwhelmed him and then when the flood of nightmares receded, it resurged and struck him just as hard over and over.

A vicious cycle of terror tore at him. It was like he was reliving every all over again. Every sight, smell, sounds, and agony ran through him. He felt his skin split open from rough falls and close calls, the sick scent of rot and decay that flooded his nose for so long that he had gotten used to it. The sounds of the roars and screams of the denizens of his own personal hell.

Eventually it got too much for him and he could not handle them anymore. He fell back and grabbed his head, trying to make the memories stop. He felt his fingernails dig into his scalp and the physical pain pulled him from his mental anguish. He hung onto the fact as he gripped his head harder, causing his fingernails to dig deeper and cause a wave of sickening pain. However, it had also pulled him from the river of memories that were bombarding his mind. He opened his eyes and that was the final thing he needed to shut out everything.

Moody was looking down on him with an unreadable expression while everyone in the room were staring at him in horror. He slowly uncurled his fingers and felt his skin lift along with his nails for a moment before releasing. He felt warm thick liquid surge from the unblocked wounds run down his face and nearly blinding his right eye. Harry touched his forehead and was not surprised to find that his hand came back covered in blood.

"Harry!" He glanced to the side and saw that Hermione was right next to him trying to grab his hand from touching his head more and scrambling to get her wand out. "Professor, do something!"

"No." Harry grunted, his head still swimming in agonizing memories. "No. No. No. No."

He shook his head carelessly, the pain bringing his mind into focus and allowing him to think about more than just what he had gone through for the past month. Hermione yelped as blood droplets landed on her arm and she leaned back in surprise.

Taking advantage of her letting go, he got to his feet and snagged his bag while drawing his wand. A whispered flesh knitting spell healed the eight half crescent wounds on his head. He paused when he heard Hermione say something along with Ron and Moody, but he was in no state to try and talk to them.

He just couldn't.

So he did the one thing that he could do. He fled out the door at a dead run, without looking back once. He ran until his legs burned and then he ran even further. He refused to stop until he felt like he had ran far enough away from everything.  
Away from the prying eyes, the scared looks, and the professor that was supposed to be looking out for them. His friends who worried about him because he was too cowardly to talk to them.

The next thing he knew, he was back in his dorm room, laying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. The silk sheets that used to be one of the things he looked forward to most, now only brought him dread as he laid on top of them.

Despite knowing that he had to have stopped running eventually, everything between the time that he had begun and the time that he had laid down, he couldn't say what happened. It wasn't like his dreams, he knew that he had done something after he had ran, but he just had no idea what that something was.

Now he was laying on the same sheets that brought him so much fear, but he was too tired to do otherwise. His body hurt like he had let the quidditch team practice hitting bludgers at him. A quick look around told him that it was well past midnight and most of his roommates were well and truly asleep. His eyes could barely stay open to look around before he joined them.

When sleep came, Harry did not even try to fight it. He was tired and after his breakdown in defense, he wanted nothing more than to rest. Dreams be damned, he was too tired to care. What more could his own mind through at him that it didn't already?

As he fell asleep, he felt something in him shift and suddenly sleeping did not seem like the best idea, but it was too late.

[Page break]

Harry expected to wake up in his bed as always, covered in a new set of cuts and feeling the exhaustion that was soon becoming all encompassing. He would heal his wounds and fake caring about school as he made his way through the day in an effort to allay his friend's worries.

What he did not expect was to wake up on cold, slimy stones with the sounds of crows screeching and howls filling the air. He levered himself to his knees and found that he was in a dark alleyway with only murky puddles and trash to keep him company. Harry instantly recognized where he was. Not the exact location, but the city.

He was in the city that he dreamed about. The city full of terrors and nightmares that had plagued him for almost a month. Harry pinched himself and immediately hissed when he felt the pain. That did not make sense though. He knew that when he dreamed, the only time he would ever feel pain was when he woke up. The wounds he garnered in the dream would only hurt when they became a reality. In the dream, he would always have the muted feeling of them existing, but at the same time, they didn't. Like he wasn't really there.

He scratched himself with one of his nails to confirm something. He found that the pain was sudden and very much real. Harry began to hyperventilate, but he calmed himself down. Panicking would do no good.

He could still be dreaming though. Maybe it was like this every time he came back. He would only remember vague hints of what he had been feeling and all of this would fade away like every other time.

He hoped at least.

Harry went to grab his wand, but he found his pocket empty. He tried in all his other pockets, but it was the same story for each. None of them held his wand. He quickly began looking around and turning over the trash in hopes that he would find it.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, he grew more and more frantic with his search until he just stopped. His wand was not there.

He accepted that fact as calmly as he could. Which meant that he was about to start panicking, but he stopped himself before he could truly start to get frantic. He was in an unknown place, but he was not alone. He saw that there were still lights on in the city and where there was light, there were people.

The first house with a light on was just outside of the alleyway. Harry quickly picked his way over the garbage and skirted around the puddles of filth. The streets were just like what they were in his dreams. The stone roads were in ruins and puddles filled all the depressions. Weeds and moss grew up through the street and pushed the cobblestone apart. The roads were lined with large ornate coffins wrapped in chains, as if the occupants would try and force their way out. The buildings all around him were not in much better condition than the road. The shingles were falling off, the walls were covered in scratches and it looked like none of them had been painted in over a decade.

The house that he was heading towards was not much different. Much like the rest of the houses, the maple wood door was faded with age and whatever decoration that was painted on the wood had long since flaked off. Harry grabbed the knocker and hit it three times and waited for a moment. There was no answer so Harry knocked again harder this time.

"Go away!" A scratchy voice replied from the other side of the door. "We want nothing to do with your kind here," He trailed off with a coughing fit.

"Please let me in," Harry begged through the door. All his memories of the nightmares were rushing back to him as he heard a howl closeby.

"Lousy offcomer. Who'd open their door on the night of a hunt! Away with you. Now!" With that Harry heard the man move away from the door.

Harry knocked on the door several more times, but to no avail. The man would not come back. He looked down the street and noticed that there was another light on.

He knocked on that door. This time he did not have to knock twice and the response was instant. "I don't reckon you're from around here!" A female voice called out. "Knocking on the door in the dead middle of a hunt.

"Can you let me in," Harry called out, "I don't know where I am."

He was met with silence for a moment. "Well, pffft, stuck outside on a night of a hunt! Ahh, you poor, poor thing..."

"What hunt?" Harry asked. "The man down the street said the same thing, but I don't know what it is!"

A shrill cackle resounded from the door, causing howls from the nearby animals to act up. "You better get moving, boy!" She wheezed with a mad cackle, "They're coming for you, they are!"

There was another light lit on the other end of the street and he was about to knock on it with the hope that the person in that one would help him, but the local populace had another idea for Harry.

A growl from the other end of the street alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone. Glowing red eyes glared at him from the other side of the street. Harry cursed the woman under his breath. Her loud laughter had drawn the beast to him.

The lycanthrope stared at him with malice and bloodlust in its eyes. Harry slowly began backing away. The werewolf growled and started forward. As he was backing up, he bumped into a coffin and that was the signal that the wolf was waiting for. The ravenette spun on his heel and sprinted away as the wolf began its charge. The beast's glistening teeth gnashed as it ran after its new found prey. Its howl sent shivers up Harry's spine.

The one thing that Harry would ever thank Dudley for was that he taught him valuable lessons when being chased. Without his years of experience, Harry could say that he would never had made it out of that alleyway with the werewolf chasing him.

Using every trick that he could, Harry ran from the wolf. He scaled boxes that would slow the wolf down as it burst through them. Jumped and climbed over fences, ducked under low overhangs, and even climbed up the side of a couple buildings.

However the wolf was persistent and followed him across everything. The feeling of the wolf biting at his heels had him run even faster over the uneven stone beneath his feet. His heart felt like it was about to explode out of his chest, but he pushed past the pain and ran on. He did not know whether he was dreaming or if this was actually happening and he did not want to find out by getting mauled by a werewolf.

He was starting to slow down, Harry noticed. His breaths were ragged and no matter how much he breathed, he did not seem to be able to get enough air. The edges of his vision were beginning to blur as he sprinted through the streets, mantling over coffin and doing everything in his power to stay ahead of the beast.

Making one last ditch effort to leave the wolf behind, Harry leapt onto the side of a building and scrambled up the wall. Climbing from one window to the next as fast as he could. His fingers scraped harshly against the wood and it felt as if he had lost half of his fingernails in his ascent. However, the foul smell of the werewolf behind him kept him going.

The roof was thankfully flat, so the moment that Harry got his torso up, he was able to roll the rest of himself onto the roof. A loud scratching and snarling that was progressively getting closer kept him moving though.

He did not get far though. The edge of the roof overlooked a four story drop and by the time he realized that, the wolf was already up. Its menacing red eyes glared at Harry as it stalked across the roof. its long grimy claws clicked against the roof as it went.

Harry wanted to cry. He had two options, neither of them good. He could stay and allow the wolf to maul him and hopefully escape with his life or he could jump and allow gravity to decide his fate. He glanced back one last time and noticed that just below the ledge, was an outcropping to the roof.

He clung onto the chance of survival and made up his mind. Close by, Harry and the wolf heard a deafening bang. The wolf turned its head away and looked towards the noise. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, Harry turned and jumped. The wolf quickly turned and saw this. It refused to let the prey that it had chased for so long get away. The werewolf leapt forward was a growl and swiped his claws at Harry, hoping to kill him before he could get away.

The claws made contact and tore through his robe with ease, parting flesh and fabric just as easily. Harry screamed as his back exploded with pain which redoubled when he clipped the ledge that he was aiming for.

He had a brief moment of silence where he realized that he was about to die. He had missed the jump and had a forty foot drop ahead of him. Of all the ways he imagined that he would die, he never thought that he would die because he fell off of a roof while being chased by a werewolf.

He had always read that one's life would flash before their eyes in the face of death, but he could say conclusively that was not true. The only thing that he could think about as he fell was that he wished that the fall would knock him out so that he would not have to live through being eaten.

Harry opened his eyes and saw the ground rush to meet him before he no longer felt anything.

[Page break]

The small stream of water ran red as she ran her bloody fingers under the tap. She could not help, but sigh as she reached next to her sink and dried her fingers. She had hoped that the experimental cure she could would work, but just like all the other ones, it failed. No matter what she tried, she just didn't have enough information on how the disease worked and was just taking shots in the dark.

She felt horrible knowing that she had led to the man's untimely demise, but he was so far gone that it was only a matter of time that the beasthood took over his mind and he would be no better than the animal that caused him to show up on her doorstep. She had broken her oath to not harm once more and it tore at her, but she was too far already. She needed to find the cure to this dreaded disease and if it took her tearing her soul apart to do it, than she would.

She reached behind her belt and gripped the wooden stock of one of her most dreadful possessions.

She hated the fact that she owned one, but in this city, no one was safe and if she was to survive to see her research reach fruition than she would need to keep herself safe. However sometimes, she would need it for more heartbreaking needs. Like the unfortunate need she found herself having now.

On the table in front of her, laid a man convulsing and breaking. Her cure had slowed down the spread of the disease, but all that did was make it so that the transformation would take longer before it took hold. Once it took hold, it seemed to almost accelerate the disease.

She teared up a bit as she pressed the forged metal tube to the struggling man's temple. A small prayer was said, but the man was too far gone to hear her speak.

"Find peace in the arms of the holy mother." The white haired woman quietly prayed to the man before she pulled the trigger on the flintlock. The sound of the gun going off echoed around the room with a thundering roar. The acrid smoke filled the room, causing the woman to wave her hand to remove the smoke. "Please find peace, and please try to forgive me, I'm doing the best I can do." She sniffed and wiped a few of her tears away.

The woman heard a scream from right outside of her clinic followed by a loud thump of something striking stone.

Heedless of the danger that may be out there, she reloaded the pistol and grabbed her haphazard sword on the way to the front door. She quickly took in the facts in front of her. A lycanthrope was standing on the building across the way, howling loudly. On the ground below the wolf was a man, no, boy who looked no more than fourteen laid in a broken pile.

The wolf must have chased the boy up to the roof and caused him to fall off in the process. That begged the question why he was outside at night. Especially the night of the weekly hunt when the mad made a point to come out and kill everything they saw.

The nurse made her way over to the boy's body so that she could bring it in and give him a proper burial. She noticed that his clothing were made out of a fabric that no one else from Yharnam wore besides a few of the more wealthy clerics. That explained everything, the boy must have been an outsider. He probably did not know the dangers and had been caught unaware by the hunt.

Poor soul, he probably sought for the fable salvation of healing blood and found damnation instead.

The woman shook her head as she grabbed the boy and prepared to lift him. It was always a shame when one's life was cut short so early. She had seen too much of such cases recently.

She carried the boy towards the shed where she kept all the bodies when she froze. A second later, the boy in her arms coughed and blood sprayed from his lips.

"Oh," The woman said in surprise, "So you are still alive, hm? Let's get you patched up then. If you can hear me, my name is Iosefka. I'll be helping you today, boy."

She carried the boy inside and was surprised by how light he was. Most boys his age would be difficult for her to carry, but he couldn't weigh more than nine stones soaking wet. She frowned as she looked down at his blood coated form. His clothing covered up everything which made it hard to determine just what was wrong with him. The profusely bleeding cut on his back was a given, but if he had fallen, then she expected him to have a few broken limbs.

Once inside the clinic, she roughly pushed the corpse of the man she had just killed off of the operating table and placed the boy gently on it.

The first thing she did was cut all of his clothing off of his body and could not help, but gasp at the sight in front of her.

Being from a rather affluent city with the miracle of blood on their side, Iosefka did not see much malnutrition in her time as a medic. The sight of the pronounced ribs and painfully thin waist gave her pause before she pushed herself past it. He needed her help and gawping at him like a fool would do nothing.

She was right about him breaking several of his bones. Almost every rib was cracked and both of his arms were broken in several different places. It looked like he had tried to break his fall with his arms. Other than that, she found that his left femur was broken and a deep gash on his thigh made it hard to set.

After several hours of toiling away to keep the boy alive, Iosefka knew that she had done all that she could physically and even that was not enough. He had lost too much blood to survive for much longer. Even as she watched, he bled through his bandages that covered a majority of his body.

There was only one thing that was going to save his life and that was the use of the miraculous blood the healing church gave out. She was hesitant to use it though. Ever since the plague broke out, she had been unable to get a steady supply. The mad men that roamed the streets blocked most of her supply route so she could only scavenge what she could off of the dead. She had to be careful or she would run out.

However she saved them for special occasions like this one. The medic stepped over to a large cabinet built into the back of the sick room and threw it open, only to have her heart sink. It was empty.

She must have used the last of her blood vials on her previous patient and didn't even realize it. She rummaged through each of the drawers in hope that she was wrong and a vial of blood or two had just rolled in back. She checked everywhere and knew without a doubt that she was completely out.

That did not mean that she did not have another way which she could save the boy. Though she was hesitant to use it. It had been passed down in her family for almost a hundred years. It would definitely save the boy's life, but could she truly waste her most precious heirloom on someone that she had never seen before? She looked back towards the unconscious boy on her operating table and glanced at the body that she had moved to the corner of the room.

Yes she could. She had broken her oath, to help people and do no harm, far too many times for it to mean anything anymore, but if she could redeem herself by saving the boy, even by just a little bit, then she would do it. She grabbed the large bottle of blood in her cabinet and made her way to the boy.

The blood shimmered ethereally for a moment in the soft light before melding back into the deep crimson fluid.

[Page break]

Even when he had felt like he was being burned alive after killing Quirrell or when he had an acidic venom of the basilisk flowed through his veins, he did not feel as bad as he was at that very moment. No matter how much he tried, he could not move his body. Every breath was a struggle and every twitch sent a wave of agony through him again and again.

"Oh, yes. Paleblood... So you were the one chosen?" He heard from his side. The voice sounded like it belonged to an old man, but at the same time, it was ageless. "Well, it took you long enough to come to the right place. Yharnam has been waiting for you, after all,"

Harry forced his head to turn, trying not to scream as the pain rippled through his body, causing his body to ignite in agony. The man was bound to a wheelchair that squeaked as it rolled closer to where Harry laid.

He was right about the man being old though. The man looked almost as old as Dumbledore. His chin was covered in grey stubble and his hair was wiry and all over the place. The shadows cast by the small lantern blocked the rest of his face though.

"You need only to unravel its mystery before you can do your duty," The man continued, "But where's an outsider like yourself to begin?"

The man rolled his wheelchair into the light and Harry got a clear look on the man's face for the first time and was horrified. Bloody bandages covered his eyes and from what little it did not cover, revealed pits of darkness where his eyes used to be. The rest of his face was pockmarked with scars and signs of old age. "Easy, with a bit of Yharnam blood of your own..." He placed his face closer to Harry's and stared at him. "But, first you need a contract."

The man reached into his coat and pulled out a long roll of paper. "To be free of your pain and suffering and transcend to a life that you were chosen to do," The man said gravely as he held it out for Harry, "All that is needed is a splash of blood."

At the promise of being free from his mind numbing pain, Harry reached up and went to grab the contract, suppressing his need to scream as the bones in his arms and torso all shifted painfully. His arm flopped down on his bed, but that did not stop the old man from helping him. "That's right, just a bit of blood," He held the contract out a mere inch from Harry's finger, so close that he would only need to twitch and he would touch the paper.

With herculean effort, Harry flicked his finger against the paper. The blood that ran down his hand from his wounds, splash along the bottom.

The man grimly looked over Harry, his hot breath wafted over him. "Good. All signed and sealed," he put the roll of parchment into a tube and capped it. "Now, all that is left is to begin the transfusion. Oh don't you worry... this won't hurt a bit." The man reached over to where Harry's IV tube came from and twisted a knob allowing the blood to enter his veins. "From now on... You may think it all just a bad dream and you would be correct, 'tis one. Too bad that doesn't matter anymore, with this blood, you're living in it now."

Harry's blood ran cold at the old man's words, but nothing could stop him from fading out as he felt the warm sanguine fluid enter his bloodstream through the needle. "I would've rathered someone more... capable to be my legacy, oh well watching you flounder will be entertaining. Don't give up too quickly, or do, just make it funny." The old man's rotten grin was the last thing he saw before the warmth from the new blood overtook his body and blocked out everything else.

It felt like he was trapped in the darkness. No matter where he turned to look, there was nothing there. His body felt like it was floating. There was no mind numbing pain, no pins and needles, nothing. He could not feel a thing. He tried to yell, but nothing came out and he was not sure if he would have been able to hear it in the first place anyways. The only one of his senses that worked in this limbo state was his sense of smell and taste. His nose was clogged with the stench of iron while his mouth was filled with copper. It was enough that he felt like he was going to gag.

Than as quickly as the feeling came, it passed and light flooded into his eyes. He found himself in an office that reminded him of Madam Pomfrey's while at the same time different. There was no way that Madam Pomfrey would allow for such a large amount of blood to build up.

Harry lulled his head to the side, unable to do anymore than that and froze. The walls were bleeding.

Blood seeped from behind every panel and slowly oozed down the walls to the ground where it spread out to form a crimson coating for the floorboards. The roof above wasn't spared as blood flowed from the corners of the room into a pool that dripped a steady stream of the liquid straight to the floor in a waterfall of the life giving substance.

A grey, broken claw broke the surface before a second and third came out. The claws were almost a foot long before the rest of the hand came out. Then whatever was coming out quickly found its grip on the floor and heaved itself out of the liquid.

The same lycanthropic creature that had chased him off of the roof pulled out of the liquid. Unlike the other one, this one did not have any skin to cover itself. Harry could see each and every muscles as clear as day with tendons and bone in between the tissue.

The hideous creature sprayed blood as it stalked forward towards Harry. The demonic growls gurgled from its throat as it bore down on the immobile boy.

Harry watched in terror as the creature got closer. He wished with all his might for the beast to die. Every fiber of his being wanted it gone, never to show itself to him again. Then, just as it was about to swipe its abnormally long claws down at Harry, a spark ignited on its hand.

Then another and another and another. Soon its entire limb was ablaze, causing it to flail back into the blood. Harry watched as the wolf was immolated in front of him. In a bright blaze, the wolf disappeared.

The moment that the wolf went away, Harry felt a burden lift from his body. Like he was shackled down, but someone had released him.

Just before he passed out once more, he looked down and noticed that there was a small pale face peeking over the side of his bed, staring at him with milky eyes. Harry was about to try and get a closer look, but he couldn't hold his eyes open any longer.

[Page break]

Harry rolled out of bed and rubbed his eyes while sitting on the edge. Without even opening his eyes, he searched his body for any pain and was pleasantly surprised when he found that he was mostly uninjured. There was only one place that bothered him and that was his left elbow. It felt like something was restricting his arm from moving.

Harry quickly stretched before he looked around the room. He could not hear Ron and Seamus fighting for the loudest sleeper award so maybe he got a full night sleep. The moment he opened his eyes, he stopped. He did not recognize the room. He was not in his bed, he was not even in a bed at all. Instead he found himself laying on what looked like an operating table.

He couldn't or more accurately did not want to believe that he had woken up somewhere that was not in his dorm room. Harry took a deep breath as his fears of what may have happened began to surface. He looked around and, as much as he did not want to do, he confirmed his fears. He was still in the demented city that tormented his dreams and this time, they were no longer dreams.

The room he found himself in was much like the one he and the old man had their discussion in, what little of it that he could remember. It had cabinets lining the walls, filled with various jars of liquids and herbs. Blood and other gore was free from the room except for a corner that held a pile of raw viscera and trash. He quickly turned his eyes from the sight. The first thing he did was pull out his IV tube. The jar was empty of anything so it was just a nuisance.

Now that he was not distracted, he realized just how cold it was in the room. Especially when he realized that he had no clothing on. Harry frantically looked around for his own clothing and found them. The problem was that they laid in the pile of waste in the corner.

His luck was not that bad though. Laying on the table nearby was a set of clothing. He quickly threw on the clothing, uncaring about what they looked like. Even though there was no one in the room, he hated being exposed. The clothing were not in the best condition, but they were better than nothing even if Harry had to ignore several of the dark stains around some of the patchwork. It was a normal long sleeve shirt with a brown vest. The pants were simple and the outfit was finished off with a sturdy belt. Noticing something that had fallen, Harry stooped down and picked up the small note.

The note stated that the person that saved him, Iosefka, had left him some clothing then went out looking for more blood vials — Harry had no idea what that meant — and would not be back until the morning. The note also mentioned how she did not expect him to wake before than and the note was just a precautionary.

The note did not help him much, but it did give him a name to the person that had saved him. Harry put the note down and went back to searching the room for something that would help him.

Harry initially felt bad about snooping around the room of the person that saved him, but he knew that if he was going to survive, he needed to get all the information he could. He especially need to know how he was still alive because he was sure that he should have been dead even with magic. He did stay away from the medical equipment though, as much as he needed help, he still owed whoever saved him a debt and refused to risk breaking what was obviously life saving tools.

He checked the cabinets next and behind the doors of one cabinet laid something more valuable than treasure. He found that there were several handwritten journals by Iosefka and others lined up on a shelf.

A brief notion of regret for intruding on Iosefka's privacy halted his hand, but he ruthlessly shoved that thought down. Now was not the time for thinking about how others may feel about his actions.

Harry grabbed the first couple of books and began working his way through them. He had several hours before Iosefka came back and he was going to use those hours to find out as much as he could.

The first journal was not the most interesting book that Harry had read, it was filled with technical jargon that he had to try and decipher from the rest of the text. Interspaced between notes was the story about Iosefka's arrival to the city and setting up her clinic to help people.

Harry read about how she had come from a town just outside of the city with the hope of learning from the doctors and aiding the sick and elderly like her father and mother did before her. The amount of optimism and want to help that she wrote with was inspiring. Indirectly, Harry learned about Yharnam, the city that he found himself in.

Yharnam was rather different than any city that Harry had heard of before. It more resembled a city-state than it did as a part of a kingdom. The Healing Church ruled over the city and policed the populace while at the same time preaching their doctrine.

The Healing Church was not necessarily a bad thing though. They practiced a skill called the ministration of blood, the art of healing the ill and mending the wounded with a transfusion of blessed blood.

From what Harry could tell from the journal, blood was everything in Yharnam. The people even drank it recreationally much like how Harry would expect a vampire to. This had led to them having an unsavory reputation with the rest of the civilized world and even Iosefka had reservations with coming to the city. However those seeking a cure for their ailments flocked to the city regardless since this blessed blood actually did work wonders and could cure almost everything wrong with a person.

Harry finished up the first journal that ended when the nurse had finished setting up her clinic. She no longer had time to write as she studied her practice and began helping people.

The next journals were mainly case studies on patients with her thoughts spread throughout. Harry skimmed through and started to notice a pattern. Over the years, people began to get increasingly sick and showing the same symptoms that got worse as time went on. While reading, he could also see what happened to Iosefka as the years of being a medic in the city of blood wore on.

She had lost most of her optimism and naivety, replacing them with cynicism and melancholy. It was not until in the third case study book did she put the name of the disease down.

The ashen blood plague.

The plague decayed the minds of its victims to insanity and killed them. Iosefka had tried to treat it with the miraculous blood of the church, but her like many others found that it made things worse. The blood reacted harshly with the plague and mutated the afflicted into beasts or increased the ferocity of the beasts who already turned. The more blood that was consumed over their lifetime, the worse of a beast that was created.

One such beast was the lycanthrope. A werewolf-like monster, but instead of shifting forms every month, they were locked into that form and state of mind. It seemed that this beastly nature was the only thing that the healing church could not cure. So instead of going for the roots of the symptom and fixing the plague, they fixed the symptoms.

Harry felt as sick as Iosefka did when he read through what the church did. Deploying hunters was the church's answer to the city's pleas for help. Instead of healers, they sent glorified murderers to hunt down anyone with any hint of infections and wipe them and anyone nearby. Those hunters in turn became worse than the very thing that they were created to fight. The nurse that healed him mentioned how the black robes of the church became synonymous with fear.

She also mentioned that here was another sect of hunters that was separate from the church. These hunters were leather dusters and tricorn hats, setting them apart from the others. These were the hunters that did their best to curb the monsters threat. Rather than becoming symbols of fear, they became something to be weary of. While never outright killing the innocent like the others, many had fallen to the plague and hunters made the worst beasts. Harry remembered seeing a couple of these hunters in his dreams, but he could never get close to them before they disappeared.

So far, Harry had been able to read all the journals at a good clip. He had gotten through three of them in less than two hours. They were not that big, but Iosefka's handwriting was difficult to follow in parts and others just confused him. However, when he opened the red book that also housed Iosefka's more recent writings, he had to slow down. None of the others were quite as important as this one.

The first words written down in the book set the tone for the rest of the journal. "I must cure the plague by any means necessary."

A short simple sentence, but one that would drive Iosefka to conduct many inhumane experiments in the name of saving others. As much as Harry wanted to condemn the woman for what she had done. He just couldn't... Not after what he had read in her journals about how horrible things were. Not after he had experienced firsthand what the city had fallen to. The dead in the streets, the monsters around every corner, the crazed townsfolk, and every other horror imaginable. What price was too much to try and end this?

This was not a medical journal or an impersonal accounting of day to day life. This was the only way for a woman being driven insane by her work to retain a measure of control and get an outlet for the pain.

Harry felt awful for Iosefka as he read further and further into her journals, watching as she broke down due to her inability to help anyone. It seemed that every failed experiment weighed on her consciousness. Her drive to find the cure was the only thing that she could cling to keep herself from either going mad or killing herself. She mentioned several times that the pistol she used for protection seemed to call to her in the nights where she could hear what happened to her city.

However her tests were not without results. The things she learned in her experiments were incredible and even Harry could tell that and he did not have much more than a shaky base in medicine. She found several drugs that were capable of slowing the disease, but eventually the body would become immune to the changes and turn or the drug would cause something even worse to happen. Despite years of experiments, she still hadn't had a breakthrough with a cure.

It seemed that Iosefka and the church agreed on one thing though and that was that once someone turned into a beast, nothing would save him or her. They were stuck like that and the only thing that could be done was to put an end to their madness.

Then Harry reached the end of the notebook. Just below an entry of a failed experiment with the words "Subject 'Brian' Terminated", Harry found his entry.

The entry on him was short and simple compared to her experiments. It listed his injuries along with notes on his malnourishment and suspected abuse. Then it got on with his treatment. She was able to put him back together easily, but it was keeping him alive that was the problem. She had ran out of blessed blood and was forced to use something called paleblood to fix him. It was the blood of one of the first hunters from over a hundred years ago when the ashen blood plague was still hidden and kept from the public eye. That blood was treated to remove any contaminants as was standard and had been mixed with healing blood that kept the rare blood potent and healthy. It had been given to Iosefka's grandfather where it remained in the family until administered to Harry.

The rest of the journals in the shelf seemed to be on other medical practices that the nurse referenced in her experiments and Harry could do without reading them.

A glance out the window told Harry that it was still nightfall and the moon was high in the sky. Harry shrugged and put the journal away exactly how he had found them. He would just have to wait until Iosefka got back from her blood run before he could get any more answers.

Now that he had done all that he could do in the sickroom, Harry decided to wander around the clinic and hopefully find out more of his situation.

He had accepted that he was bodily in Yharnam. There was no way that any of this was fake or just a nightmare to him. Everything was too clear and real. The dreams would always have a slight blur to them or something would feel off. He would only be half there and nothing could really hurt him more than superficial injuries. He had been a ghost, but that time was over.

He was now part of this city.

The building could use a great amount of repair. Everywhere Harry looked, he could see cracks in the wood and holes in the floor. It did not help that blood seemed to have soaked through parts of the floor, forever dying it a dark burgundy that could be nothing other than blood.

The stairs from the sickroom creak ominously as he made his way down. For a second, Harry thought that the stairs may even give way, but they held long enough for him to get off without falling.

The room at the bottom of the stairs seemed like it was straight out of one of the old war-time photographs he had seen in primary school. Beds lined the room with very little space between them. Old blood coated most of them from whoever was injured enough to arrive at the clinic. Harry examined the jars that lined the walls and found that each of the jars held various organs. He could not help, but notice that he was not as affected as he thought he would have been when confronted with this. Several months of seeing this city in his dreams seemed to have desensitized him from these horrors. What was a few hearts in various stages of change compared to being chased by a lycanthrope?

He was pulled away from looking at the jarred human parts when he heard a strange sound coming from the other side of the room and went over to investigate. It sounded like something wet was being broken and torn repeatedly. It sounded like Ron eating. With that thought he came across the sight in front of him.

A familiar being was crouched on the other side of the room. Its bloody muzzle was deep in the torn chest cavity of a body. The ripping sound came from the beast devouring the human body. Harry slowly crouched down below one of the beds and watched the wolf eat. The beast seemed to have been injured. Harry could see that a lot of the blood spread around the area was from the beast itself and not its meal.

Harry eyed the door that was across the room. He would rather face the dangers of the city and have the option to escape than to be trapped in a building with the wolf. Knowing that trying to fight the lycanthrope barehanded was akin to sign his own death warrant, he chose another path and try and edge around the beast to escape its notice. Unfortunately, the floorboards were old and weak so they cracked as he stepped on one. The lycanthrope's head shot up and its blood red eyes bore into him. Harry froze merely five feet away from the wolf.

The injured beast spun around and hooked him with one of his razor sharp claws, raking across his flesh horribly, causing Harry to fall and scream out in pain. It was white hot agony as he careened into a bed and onto the floor. The wounds burned as he tried to stop the bleeding. He looked up in time to see the beast roared and lunged for him. His last thought was how all the woman's work in keeping him alive was all for naught. He had died before he could even leave the building. He did not even get to warn the woman about the new inhabitant to the clinic as he felt the teeth sink deeper into the flesh of his shoulder and tear.

All feeling left his body as he was shaken violently. He could no longer even feel his blood pounding in his ears, it was just white noise.

A sickening sound of meat tearing overrode the white noise and he felt like he was dropping, but instead of hitting the floor, he felt like he was falling for an eternity.

His body limply dropped to the floor with a wet slap, but his soul had already transcended his flesh and was moving onto the great beyond.

A creature that lived beyond the mortal realm, in a space beside and above sensed his departure and knew that it was their time to act. Tentacles of energy gently encompassed the soul of a boy tainted by the blood of its child and changed it, anchoring it, drawing it into their own dream beyond dreams.

[Page break]

Grass brushed against his nose, tickling him until he woke up. When he did so, he shot to his feet and gasped as he looked around in fear for the wolf that had just been clamped around on his shoulder like a demented leech.

Rather than finding himself in a ratty, broken down clinic or even his bed at Hogwarts like he hoped. He found himself on an outside on an island. The full moon lit up the land like it was daylight, revealing that it was not like any kind of island that he had seen before. Rather than on water, the island was floating on an endless mist and out in the ether were stone pillars as far as the eye could see, spanning from the mist below to the clouds above as if they were holding up the sky.

There were only two things of note on the island. There was a large building that was made of stone and was inspired by a gothic design, then behind it was a large tree that covered half the island. Save for under the tree, the rest of the land was covered in graves that coated the grounds. All of them were meticulously taken care of and had fresh flowers laid on them.

"Am I dead?" Harry wondered to himself as he stepped down the carefully laid brick path. "I always pictured the afterlife... slightly bigger,"

He blinked away his daze, he couldn't be dead. That wolf had not killed him or else he would not have woken up. He must have been teleported somewhere else, just like he was transported to Yharnam. There was only one thing he could do beyond curling up and wishing for things to go back to normal and that was putting one step in front of the other like he always had to. Sitting down and hoping for things to work out had not helped when Voldemort went for the stone, or when Ginny was kidnapped and it wouldn't work now.

With nowhere else to go, Harry made his way up to the structure. In a small alcove created by the path up to the building and the hill was a basin filled with a strange white liquid that lazily swirls in its bowl. However, it was what was nearby that captured his attention. Next to the stairs that lead to the stone building was a person sitting on one of the cobblestone walls and leaning against another.

Upon closer inspection, he found that it was a beautiful woman. Her skin was pale and flawless. The hair that spilled from her bonnet was blonde bordering more towards grey though not by age. She was clad in a well crafted dress with a shawl covering most of her body. Around her throat was a small scarf and a sparkling necklace.

If it was not for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, he would have thought that she was dead rather than asleep. "Excuse me, miss?" Harry walked up to her cautiously. "Miss?"

Her steady breaths did not change as Harry waited for her to respond. Harry tried again to similar results. She would not wake up and Harry was unwilling to touch her. Deciding to see if there was anyone else on the island, he started up the stairs, but was stopped before he could make it halfway up them.

Harry yelped in surprise when an innocuous puddle that had been sitting on one of the steps suddenly grew murky and a small hand shot out of it. He jumped back a step and grabbed a loose brick and held it up high. A second hand joined the first which was followed by its body. It was a grotesque thing. Its body was so emaciated that the paper thin skin outlined each bone as clear as day. Its face was hideous, lacking both lips and a nose.

Soon the one became four as three more rose from the puddle. Harry watched and slowly put the brick down as they turned and reached into the puddle. They slowly pulled a blade out of the puddle with them and Harry's blood ran cold. Held reverently by two of the creatures was a blade that looked almost exactly like the one that Seamus had except it looked like it had been cleaned thoroughly and was much sharper.

He looked down at where the small scar he had gotten from the blade's brother was. He stared at it with dull eyes.

Slowly everything was starting to come together. The nightmares, the wicked city, his supposed curse, everything. All of this was caused by Seamus' blade, he had thought for awhile that the blade was the reason, but he never had proof until now. From the moment that he had been cut by the black blade, his life had changed. It seemed that the irish boy was not blowing hot air when he said that the blade was cursed.

His left hand crossed over his chest to hug himself, but stop when he felt odd bumps under his shirt. He snaked his hand through his collar and felt what he hoped to not find. Massive scars created a clear image under his fingers.

He could not help a laugh from bubbling to the surface. "I'm dead..." Harry giggled to himself. "I'm actually dead!" He clutched his stomach as his hysterical laughter didn't stop. Everything that he had gone through: surviving the killing curse, killing Quirrell, defeating a basilisk and Voldemort, freeing Sirius, every time he forced himself passed his breaking point, and he died because he got a small cut on his hand because of his pig headed friend.

It wasn't funny at all, but he could not stop laughing. In fact, the only thing that he could feel was a crushing sense of grief. He had barely gotten to experience any of the joys of life. The Dursleys were finally moving behind him and this happened.

The grey creatures in the puddle watched in confusion as the boy they presented the blade to, fell to his knees as tears fell down his face. Normally it would take several weeks for new arrivals to breakdown. They wondered to themselves if they had anything to do with it.

"Do... You... Not... Like... Gift?" An echoing, raspy voice slowly asked Harry as he laughed himself hoarse.

"Who said that?" Harry's head snapped up and looked around.

"We..." The voice replied hauntingly. It was hollow and echoed from everywhere, while at the same time it was localized.

"We?" His emerald eyes immediately locked on the milky eyes from the creatures in front of him. "You?"

The creatures in the pool nodded their heads wildly, one of which seemed to fall and hit the ground next to the puddle before pushing itself back up. Their behaviour reminded Harry of Dobby the house elf.

However small, the sense of familiarity allowed Harry to gather himself up and wipe the tears off his face. "Your gift just surprised me is all," Harry said to the four creatures. "If you don't mind me asking, what are you?"

"We... are... messengers!" They said strongly, allowing Harry to note a slight sibilant to their speech pattern. . "Servants of... the... hunter. Gift... take!"

He was hesitant to grab the intertwining blade, but he gave in quickly. The sword was lighter than he remembered. The sheath and belt that followed was gratefully taken along with the blade. The edge looked like it could cut off his fingers without his notice, having something cover it was necessary. Harry sheathed the blade carefully and pulled the belt on, shifting it to be more comfortable. A moment later he looked back to find that the messengers had another gift for him.

"For... you... master," They said. The lead messenger bobbed his head eagerly while rubbing his hands together like he was washing them under water. His lipless mouth turned into a horrifying grin.

They held up a flintlock pistol, one that looked like it came straight out of the eighteenth century. Wrapped around it was a small bandolier belt full of silver bullets.

It was only a moment's hesitation before another belt made its way around his waist with the pistol strapped to it. He was careful around the hammer of the pistol, he did not want to mess with the weapon anymore than he had to. The sword was different, he felt like having the sword was almost natural, but the gun was the opposite on the other hand. He felt uncomfortable with it being near him.

He shifted the new weight around on his person, making a note to find a more comfortable way to hold them. Harry looked back and was shocked to find another gift. Though this one was different than the last two. It was just a journal. A worn leather bound journal, but a normal one nonetheless. Harry had no problem accepting this gift.

"Thank you," Harry suppressed a laugh when the four of them did a little dance in the puddle. Once one got past the creepy echoing voice and weird appearance, they were somewhat charming. He was reserving his judgement, but so far they were much better than house elves. They had yet to try to kill — or horribly maim — him after all.

The messengers sunk back into the puddle and the murky white that had filled it disappeared. Now that they were gone, Harry collapsed on the step next to the puddle and looked around while pulling himself together. The woman was still asleep surprisingly enough. He would have thought that his little breakdown would have been enough for her to wake up.

The sword on his hip dug into his side so he drew it and laid it on his lap. He had not seen it on Seamus' version, but his own had runes etched along the fuller of both blades. As he turned it over in his hand, he found a small latch on the hilt just like where it was on the other one. He pushed it up and the sword came apart in his hands and broke into two short swords. Now that the blades were apart, Harry could effortlessly hold them in both hands unlike before. He fiddled with them for some time before he figured out how to latch it back together.

Eventually, he stood up and made his way to his original destination. The building was much larger up close and seemed to be a lot like a church now that he looked closer. He took a deep breath before pushing open the door.


	3. Chapter 3: Bloody Beginning of a Hunter

The room definitely held the same gothic charm that the exterior gave off. Rich wood and stone walls made the main hall of the building much darker and foreboding.

It may have just been his mind playing tricks on him, but it was much bigger inside than Harry first thought it would be too. At least it was able to hold a lot of stuff at once in any case.

From wall to wall and even branching onto the floor, the hall was filled to the brim with leather bound books along with various odds and ends. Dominating one of the walls however, was what could only be described as an armory. Weapons hung from almost every available part of the wall while the rest was taken up by a workbench with pieces of a flintlock pistol and several large bladed weapons laid out on it. Nearby were cabinets filled with pieces of metal and parts to the weapons.

In the back of the room was a strange alter of a woman with a pool of pink water in front of it. The sweet and soothing scent that drifted throughout the island seemed especially powerful coming from the alter.

He could only look around for a moment before turning his eyes towards the workbench. He was not alone in the room.

Sitting at the desk, tinkering with a pistol was an old man in a wheelchair. The man had his back turned to Harry as he tested the hammer of the flintlock.

"Ah-hah, there you are. Welcome to the Hunter's Dream." He turned around, allowing Harry to see his face. It was the man that he had seen in the clinic. The one that he signed the contract with. The bloody bandages were clean, but no less prevalent. "This will be your home, for now. You can call me Gehrman, master to you hunters. You're probably confused. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good. You'll get used to it... eventually. They all do."

"Now just you wait one bloody minute here," Harry stopped him before he could turn around and leave "What are you talking about hunters and all that? Where am I?"

The man blew out a breath as he released his wheel and folded his hands into his lap with part of his flintlock.

"You're a hunter. You became one the minute you signed the contract and accepted the blood. You really should read a contract before you sign it," Gehrman laughed hoarsely as he placed the pistol parts down on the table. "That damnable nurse gave you the blood of a hunter, specifically mine. Now you are a member of this workshop and as such, it's your duty to eliminate threats to humanity, be they beast or other. You've already met one, else we would not be talking,"

"I'm not going to kill anyone!" Harry said forcefully. "Just tell me what is going on!"  
The old man looked at him through his bandages and laughed deeply at him. It was not a nice laugh, too full of malice and exhaustion. "That is what they all say, boy." He said with a broken smile, revealing his yellow teeth. "Once you see, then you will no longer fight it. I'm sure you may even have a little fun, I know I did."

Harry was taken back by the gall and bloodthirsty nature of the man. For him to talk about murdering like it was as unimportant as what was for breakfast took him aback. "What the bloody hell is wrong with you? You can't just kill people!"

"To be young and naive," The old man muttered to himself. "Savor that while it lasts, boy. Before long, you'll see the world differently. That blade on your hip isn't for show, it was made to kill and kill it did." Harry just scowled at the man and fruitlessly turned his body to hide the blade.

Gehrman chuckled at the teen and turned away from him to grab his pipe from the desk. He lit it and leaned back in the wheelchair, slowly surveying the workshop with unseeing eyes. "This was once a safe haven for hunters. A workshop where hunters used blood to enhance their weapons and flesh." The man said wistfully before turning bitter, "Blood... The cause of so much trouble. Disgusting practice..."

The man wheeled himself to a bookshelf across the room and grabbed one of the journals from it. "We don't have as many tools as we once did, but... You're welcome to use whatever you find. Watching you fumble around with some of them would be amusing. " Then he started to sneer as he turned his bandaged eyes towards Harry. "You can use...Even the doll, should it please you... " He seemed disgusted at even suggesting that Harry interact with whatever the doll was.

He spun in his wheelchair and started towards the exit.

"Wait! Aren't you going to teach me how to use these things!" Harry watched the man stop and glare at him.

"You accepted the contract and all that it entails. Nowhere in it does it say that I train you." The old man sneered. "You had the will to sign it, then use that will to get on with it. I have better things to do than train a child."

"That's it? You make me come here, tell me I'm a hunter — whatever that is — and leave!" Harry shouted. "Those things killed me! I need help! You owe me!"

"I don't owe you shit, brat. You owe me! I gave you the tools and access to the Dream. I'm the reason you're alive! That's all I had to do to fulfil my end, now you must fulfill yours. So why don't you go back there and kill some beasts, or else I'll just have to revoke your contract. Though you could just jump into the aether for the same effect." He turned and left the building with a few parting words. "Get out of that outfit, it is a shame for a hunter to be dressed in trash."

With that, he left Harry alone with no idea what to do. All he knew was that he was angry; angry at his confusion and at the man.

This Gehrman hadn't even told him what he was expected to do as a hunter besides kill. Kill why? To what end? Did he just keep fighting for eternity? What was the point of all this?

The only thing he said was that he had come back from the dead and something about a doll. He did not even know what he meant by doll, perhaps he meant the woman from before, but she looked so real.

Harry was distracted when a puddle formed on the floor and one of the messengers pop up from it quickly. In his bony hands was a set of clothing much like Gehrman's, but cleaner.

They would have looked like something that a victorian noble would have worn to a casual gathering, but the armor sewn into the fabric and the black armored scarf that would circle his neck revealed its true purpose.

Harry grabbed the clothing and wandered around the room in a daze, trying to take it all it. Harry was in the back of the hall when he saw a plaque over a table. the burnished bronze plague shone dully in the light.

"To escape this dreadful Hunter's Dream, halt the source of the spreading scourge of beasts, lest the night carry on forever." Harry read to himself. "So all that I have to do is stop a plague that has been going on for more than a hundred years? That sounds easy," Harry laugh self-deprecatingly before exploring the rest of the building.

A door in the back of the room led to a large hallway. After checking all of the rooms, he concluded that most of them were bedrooms for the hunters with a couple bathrooms thrown in. A small dining room and kitchen was tucked in the back of the building. Only one of the rooms looked lived in. The rest had a thin film of dust over everything. He stepped into the room in the very back of the living area and began changing into his new clothing quickly, happy to get out of his ragged gear.

After he removed everything and threw on the new pants, Harry noticed the five large new additions to his skin. Four massive claw marks now adorned his chest and a thin, but large bite mark on his collar denoted the killing blow.

As he traced the scarred flesh, he almost broke down again, but was able to catch himself at the last moment. Ignoring his despair, he threw on the rest of his clothing and tested his range of motion in his new clothing, marveling at how easy it was to move around in such a normally restricting garment.

Now that he could, he sheathed his short sword to a metal reinforced loop on his waist that allows for a quick draw while the pistol made its way into a holster that sat under his left arm. After everything was situated, he threw on a coat made of strong leather. He looked at himself in a mirror and adjusted the suit. Noticing a hint of the bite mark peeked out from his shirt, he wrapped the armored scarf around it, making sure that one of the metal plates were directly over his throat. It dawned on Harry that these were the first set of clothing that he had outside of Hogwarts' uniform that actually fit him and they were meant to be used in battle.

Suddenly feeling ill, he decided that he had enough of the workshop and left, heading out to where he had seen the woman and the messengers. He did not want to dwell on those kinds of thoughts, they brought nothing, but misery with them.

He found the woman that had been laying in the grass was still there. Though she had finally woken up and was sitting on the ledge with her legs kicking the air. Her eyes snapped to him as he came down the steps and Harry was caught in her golden eyes for a moment.

She greeted him with a smile as she lifted herself off the wall. "Hello, good hunter. I am a doll, here in this dream to look after you."

"What do you mean?" Harry edged closer carefully, but the woman remained standing still with a genial smile on her face.

"You will hunt beasts... and I will be here for you, to embolden your sickly spirit." The doll stated. "Pursue the echoes of blood and I shall channel them for your use."

"Sickly spirit?" Harry asks worriedly. All thoughts of everything else left his mind for the moment. He felt mostly fine save for a couple persistent aches and pains.

"Yes, good hunter," She replied, "I can sense weakness in your spirit. Fear not, with enough time, the weakness will be gone. I will aid you as is my purpose,"

Harry wondered what she meant, but she cut through his thoughts by asking. "Did you yet speak with First Hunter Gehrman?"

"I had the... pleasure, yes." Harry responded slowly. A look passed through her eye before it was wiped clean with almost a bout of dismay. Her face smoothed back out in an instant.

"Forgive him. He was a hunter long, long ago, but now serves only to advise them. He is obscure, unseen in the waking world." She said downcast at something. "Still, he stays here, in this dream. Such is his purpose..."

"What do you mean dream?" Harry asked her, moving to sit nearby. "Gehrman said something about the Hunter's Dream,"

"'Tis a dream we live in. A dream come to life," She replied as he sat next to her on the wall. Her golden eyes were locked onto his. "Apart, yet one with the waking world."

They sat for a moment while Harry pondered over what she had said. "What... What are echoes of blood and how will they help me?" Harry asked her.  
She gently smiled at him as she played with her fingers absently. "Echoes of the blood are echoes of the living. One can't fully understand until one has received their boon," She said cryptically, "I was made with the purpose of channeling those echoes into hunters. Empowering them to combat the night,"

"So if I bring you these echoes... you can use them to make me stronger?" Harry asked carefully.

"That is one ability of the blood echoes, yes," She confirmed. "Strength is not the only attribute that may be enhanced. 'Tis merely one of many,"

"Speaking of, Gehrman..." He paused as he watched her flinch minutely. If he had not been trained since a young age to notice facial cues, he would have missed it completely. Harry continued slower, watching to make sure he did not say something wrong. "He seems to disapprove of using blood."

Despite his carefully chosen words, a slight pained look appeared in her eyes as she answered. "The honorable first hunter is very... traditional," She paused to collect herself. "He combated the darkness unenhanced for many years... while others hunters were not capable of doing the same. My purpose was to hone the edge they lacked." She looked around sadly at some of the gravestones. "They have all fallen to time though, the workshop used to be full of those brave men and women who fought the darkness."

"I'm sorry."

"'Tis alright," She said, "It has been time out of mind since then. You should not worry about me, I am just a doll."

"Regardless," Harry replied. Truly he did not think that she was a doll. Even in this fantastical place, so much so that it was called a dream, she was much too real for that. It may have been Gehrman who planted that idea in her head. The old man seemed like the kind of person that would do that to her. "I shouldn't have been so thoughtless."

"Your words warms my heart," She replied back. "But don't worry, dear hunter. All is well."

They sat in silence as Harry debated getting up and figuring out how to get back to Yharnam. If the note was true, the quicker he got to work, the faster he would be free from this curse.

Movement from the corner of his eye drew his attention. He looked and found that a messenger was in the stone basin he had seen earlier. It swayed lightly to something that only they could hear.

"What are the messengers?" Harry asked her. The small inferi looking being looked over towards them with what looked to be a grin. It was hard to tell when the messenger had no lips.

Then like that, she switched from being downtrodden and depressed to joyous. "Ahh, the little ones, inhabitants of the dream? They find hunters like yourself, worship, and serve them. Speak words, they do not, but still, aren't they sweet?"

"They don't speak...?" Harry said confused. "They might sound strange, but I can hear them fine."

The woman next to him froze for a moment before turning to Harry quickly. "You can speak to the little ones?" She said excitedly, more animated than he had seen her for the entire conversation. She grabbed both of his hands and leaned in close, staring into his eyes. "Truly?"

"Yes," Harry said warily to the woman. He thought that he had gotten a good idea of her personality as they sat there, but it seemed that there was more to her than he thought. "It is sometimes hard to understand with their lisps, but I can hear what they say."

"What do they speak of?" She asked him with bright eyes. Then she looked down and noticed that she was grabbing onto his hands and pulled them away like she was burnt.

"I am terribly, terribly sorry," She backed away quickly and bowed her head to the bewildered boy. "I should not have let my emotions out and overstep my bounds. Please punish me however you see fit,"

"Punish... what?" The sudden shift in mood almost gave him whiplash. Harry stared at her bowing form. "Why would I punish you?"

"I touched you without your consent," She said, still facing the ground. Harry could make out a slight tremble from her shoulders. "First hunter Gehrman forbids unwarranted contact and I have broken that rule. Do what you will, to this lowly doll. I give you my sincerest apologies, please forgive me."

This reminded Harry too much of his time with the Dursleys. Punished for showing emotions and getting happy. Begging forgiveness for something as little as touching hands with someone. This Gehrman was quickly making his way to the same group that his relatives fell into.

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but he did not know what to call her. He refused to call her "doll". He would not dehumanize her like the first hunter had. Harry got to his feet and watched as she flinched in anticipation. Sometimes he wondered how people could be so cruel to others, especially to someone as gentle as she seemed to be.

Harry sighed and grasped her shoulders. Contrary to what she may have thought that he was about to do, Harry was not a monster. He raised her back up so that she was standing tall. He absently noted that she was a good head and a half taller than he was. "I will not hurt you for something so little," Harry paused for a second. "Scratch that, I will never hurt you at all."

"But First Hunter Gehrman-" The woman argued, but she was cut off before she could finish.

"I am not Gehrman," Harry said harshly before softening his features. "I am not nor will I ever be that. I was raised by people like him and suffered through the demeaning behaviour and irrational punishments. I refuse to do that to anyone."

"You're not a doll," She said confused, "Why would they do that?"

"Because they were not good people," Harry replied. "They thought that since I was different that I was below them."

"But First Hunter Gehrman is a good man," She said blankly as if the mere idea that Gehrman was anything otherwise was wrong. "Everything he does is for the best."

Harry let out a breath and sat back down on the stone ledge. He thought about arguing, but knew that he was not going to get through to her. She had been serving Gehrman for many years by the sound of it and was thoroughly devoted to the man, regardless of how he treated her. One conversation with someone that she just met would not change that. It was like when he spoke to Dobby, he had been so beaten down by the Malfoys that he still wished to please them despite everything.

Deciding to shelf the conversation, he grabbed the woman's hand slowly and pulled her back to sit on the wall. "For future note, you do not have to ask permission to touch me, I would like a slight warning though, alright?" Harry said gently, "Come sit and ask your questions about the messengers."

"Alright, good hunter," she said before sitting down.

"Call me Harry," He said, "Now what do you want to know about messengers?"  
Next to them a puddle formed and filled with white. As if summoned, a messenger popped out of it and stared at them.

"You... called?" It asked.

"Not really," The small thing tilted its head to the side, almost upsetting itself in the puddle. "However, while you are here. She would like to ask some questions."

"Good hunt... Harry," She asked, "What did you just say?"

"I just asked it to stay for a bit so that we can talk," He replied casually before stopping, "Wait, you didn't understand me, did you?"

Harry groaned when she shook her head at him. "I'm sorry," She hunched into herself, likely waiting for a punishment that was not going to come.

He pinched the bridge of his nose to stop himself. If he had his wand, he would have been tempted to go over to Gehrman and cast several curses on him. Moody said that you had to mean it for some of the worst ones to work and it was getting to that point with the old man.

'Maybe a bright red one,' he thought viciously before paling and stopping that line of thought in its tracks. He was not a bad person, he shouldn't be thinking like that. Good people did not think about torturing others.

"It's fine. I am not going to hurt you," Harry repeated and he would continue to repeat it until she did not flinch at everything he did and say. "What did I sound like? Was it like a snake?"

"Not completely," She replied slowly, "You were growling at the same time,"

"Great another language," Harry groaned under his breath. He wondered what could have caused this one. Maybe it had something to do with the blood he accepted. It may have altered his parselmouth ability to be more broad. He didn't know. He did not even know how he got the ability to speak to snakes in the first place.

"Hello, messenger," Harry greeted the small creature. "My new friend here just wanted to ask you a couple questions,"

"Master... can... talk to... big mother... for... us?" The pale skinned creature suddenly began bouncing up and down in the puddle in excitement. His excitement drew several more and when rapid fire hisses and moans were shot back in forth, all of them looked at Harry reverently.

"They are happy that they can talk to you, at least through me." Harry relayed as he watched more and more show up, until the puddle spilled over onto the ground to allow them more room. "They even called you their 'big mother'," Harry smiled at the look of joy that crossed her face.

Harry spent the next couple minutes relaying the questions that the messengers had to his companion. Eventually, the messengers had all their questions answered. They did not have many. They were not the most intelligent beings that Harry had come across. They were like humans stuck with the mental state of a seven year old child. All of their questions were simplistic, but the sheer joy that they had to finally talk to the one that took care of them was heartwarming.

As much as Harry did not want to leave the peaceful scene, he knew that he would have to. It was not a matter in his control though. He needed to get back and warn Iosefka about the werewolf that had taken up residence in her home before she got back. Based on his general belief of when the sun would rise back in the world, he had less than an hour or so before she got back.

"How do I get back to Yharnam?" Harry asked after watching the pale woman play with her small friends for a bit.

"The dream is connected through the graves of the land," She answered cryptically as she lifted one of the messengers off her dress and hugged it to her chest. At Harry's confused look, she looked over to a few gravestones that lined the path up to the workshop. They were much different than the others. They were bigger and all the writing had faded from them. Harry had not noticed, but more messengers gathered around one of the headstones than any other.

He placed his hand on the stone and thought about how could this grave have anything to do with the clinic. He immediately felt a pull in his chest and behind his eyes. Then as if he had blinked, he was gone and back in the room where he had woken up on a table. He did not notice that the clothing that he had replaced with his new suit were piled on the table where he had found them or that the note was still laying next to them. He was too busy quietly moving down the steps.

He was able to go down and only let half the stairs squeak. He glanced into the room where he found the werewolf the first time and found that it had gone back to its meal. Thankfully it was the same body as before and not Iosefka's. He was surprised to find that the body still had meat on it. He would think that after almost an hour, that the body would be divested of anything left to eat. It was in about the same shape as it was when he first came across the beast.

He didn't see his body anywhere so at least he wouldn't have to confront and deal with that.

Harry once again tried to move across the room. This time he was not aiming to leave, he wanted to get as close to the wolf as he could before being spotted. This time he was not weaponless and helpless if he was found. The blade was silently drawn from its leather sheath. It gleamed as Harry got closer to the beast.

Harry struck when the beast had stuck its head into the deceased man's chest cavity in search of more food. It was too distracted to respond in time to the sound of Harry getting closer.  
The wolf howled as the surdite blade punctured its skin with ease, but the blade was turned aside by one of the wolf's ribs. Harry fell back as he dodged out of the way of the claws wildly swinging at him. He would have gone in to attack some more, but he was flung over one of the stretchers when something heavy and wet struck him.

The body of "Subject Brian" covered him in gore as he struggled to roll out from under it. Harry's hand found a firm hold on something and lifted. He nearly lost what was left in his stomach when he noticed that his hand was wrapped around one of the man's ribs. The blood speckled teen heaved the body to the side and fortunately into the werewolf's path.  
The wolf paused as it was suddenly blinded by its food. Harry noticed the beast was distracted and swung his blade up and parted its throat. He did not have enough strength or leverage to go all the way across, but he had hit something important. Bright red arterial blood sprayed out across the room and coated everything to the wolf's right in the blood.

It scrambled away from his prone body and scrambled away, but the amount of blood flooding out of its neck was too much and it collapsed.  
Harry laid gasping for breath on the floor as the wolf slumped over dead after squirming for several seconds. He berated himself for his rash actions. He may now have a weapon, but he had no idea how to use it. He would have to practice when he got to the dream again. Gehrman was a jackass and probably wouldn't train him, but there may be books on how to handle the blade or at least give him a path to follow. Harry pushed himself up to his feet and staggers over to the stretcher he had been thrown across.

It took a couple of minutes for him to catch his breath and work up the motivation to leave. Before he went, he wrote a small note thanking Iosefka for her treatment of him and he promised to pay back her for everything that she had done for him.

The outside of the clinic definitely did not inspire any confidence in him. However it did prove that the journals had not been lying about how many patients that this plague had taken. All around the clinic was a graveyard. Stone headstones littered the yard and everywhere else were wood crosses that rose out of the ground like a small macabre forest. Just being in the graveyard gave him chills. He hoped that ghosts would not linger in this world. In his brief time here, he did not want to see just what the ghost would be like.

The large rusty gate across the yard led out to a cobblestone road. It was like a weight was lifted from his shoulders when he got out of the horrid place, only to be replaced by a weight that was even heavier. The first thing that he saw upon leaving the clinic was a destroyed stagecoach and the bodies of a group of men full of stab wounds. Harry stepped over the corpses and looked at them. The skin was sunken in and yellowed so they were not recent kills. Harry felt his gorge rise, but he forced it down. It was getting easier, he noticed. As awful as it was, practice makes perfect and there was no shortage of the dead in this city.

He turned and latched the gate to make sure that no more lycanthropes snuck in behind him. He didn't want his savior to die because he was careless.

The crunch of glass underfoot was the only warning he had before he frantically rolled to the side. His heavy armored jacket protected him from the rubble that strewn the ground. It was a good thing he rolled because he would have been split in half by an overhead chop if he hadn't, much like the man he had been examining.

The man that attacked him could barely even be called that. His wild eyes were covered with long wiry hair that stuck up every which way from under his ratty hat. His face was sunken in and his snarling mouth hidden behind his beard bore yellow teeth and extended canines. The man's arms were extended and covered in coarse hair. It was as if the man was stuck in mid transformation in becoming a werewolf. The only time he had seen something similar was when he watched Lupin transform. His eyes held less intelligence than Lupin's did when transformed though. There did not seem to be a single rational thought in the man's head as he trashed around with the axe.

The man raised his rusted and pockmarked blade and swung at Harry again. Now that he was not caught by surprise, he found that he could easily dodge it even with his malnourished, untrained body. The man telegraphed every single move and every time he swung, he overextended himself and went stumbling. Harry's counter attacks could barely be called swipes, even to himself. They were clumsy and straightforward, lacking any finesse beyond trying to fight back. If his opponent had any modicum of skill or mind left in his body than Harry wouldn't have stood a chance.

The ravenette was able to snake a blow on the man's arm and he carved halfway through the man's arm before getting stuck in his bone. Crimson poured from the wound, but the animal in the flesh of man barely even registered that his arm was almost amputated before he tried to attack with his other arm.

A crack signaled the release of Harry's sword as the man's bone broke slightly allowed his blade to come out with a wet sucking sound. Harry cautiously held his sword and called out. "Stop fighting, please," He pleaded with the man. "I don't want to hurt you again."

In response the man snarled and whipped his damaged arm towards Harry, who dodged out of the way. The man's long arm bent sickeningly over one of the stone walls nearby with a multitude of cracks and the partially cut bone gave way completely. The only thing keeping the arm attached was the muscle and sinew, but even that was tearing.

One look into the man's eyes and Harry had his answer. The bloodcrazed man would not stop fighting until one of them was dead. His flared nostrils and bloodied mouth only served to complete the picture. The man raised his arm up to attack and that was his downfall. The attack left his chest wide open and, unlike the werewolf, his bones could not deflect the weak thrust straight through his chest. The blade slid out of the dying man's body easily and hung limply from Harry's loose grip as the tall man's body fell back like a stringless marionette.

Death was never quite as quick as they showed in movies and books, Harry noted as he watched the man on the ground scramble to get up, only to fall. In the movies, they would die instantly, the moment anything happened that may be considered fatal was inflicted on them. However, the man struggled to get up and attack for almost half a minute before the lack of blood flowing through his body caught up to him and ended his life.

Harry looked down at the man with a mix of emotions. There was, of course, fear and guilt, but they were also mixed with pity for the man. It was not the man's fault that he was infected by the plague. He was probably just an innocent citizen who happened to catch the disease and Harry just killed him like a wild animal. The guilt almost overwhelmed him and he quickly stepped over to the side and heaved at the sight of the dead body. The dead body that he had made.

Rather than continue on, he took a seat on the broken carriage next to the dead men. Slowly the guilt faded away now that he could think about what he did. He rationalized that, if anything, this kill could only be considered merciful. The man's mind had decayed until he had become a beast in the form of man and only that. If he was left alive and killed an innocent person than their death would be Harry's fault. He had to be put down before he could attack someone else. At least that was what Harry told himself. Whether or not the man would have attacked someone else, he did not know and would never know now. However, the possibility was there no matter what and Harry could not allow for even the smallest possibility that someone could get hurt and infected because of him.

As he stood there over the body, he felt himself absorb something from the dead man in front of him. He had no idea what that meant though. He was not sure how he knew, but he knew that it was not malignant. It was as if some energy decided to attach itself to him. The energy settled in a small reservoir in his chest that he only just noticed existed. It held some energy already which only swelled to new heights.

When he focused on the energy, he felt warmth and the faint remnants of memories reflect back at him. Behind that, he felt the power in the energy just waiting to be tapped into. These were the so called blood echoes that the Dream's caretaker had told him about.

She was right, they were almost indescribable until he had gotten some. It was alive, but not. A part of his being, yet detached in a way he could only just begin to understand.

He resolved to talk to his new friend about the feeling before he began to quickly rummage through the man's pockets. He felt somewhat bad about it, but he needed supplies more than the dead man would. Besides he had killed someone, he forced down his revulsion, robbing them was quite a step down.

His hands dive into the large pockets and he found several items of note. The most important being a small bag of coins, a couple silver bullets that looked like they would fit in his new pistol, and several vials of what looked to be blood. From what he remembered from Iosefka's notebook, these vials could be used for instant healing should he ever need it. The blood acted like a quick healing solution, but could only do so much before more needed to be applied or ingested.

Iosefka had wrote that blood was more common than alcohol in Yharnam and if these madmen carried a few, then that may as well be true.

Coupled with the useful items were bits of scrap paper and bloody teeth that looked to come out of the mouth of a beast of some sort. Those were quickly tossed aside.

Harry contemplated on keeping the blood vial, but injecting himself with foreign blood did not sit well with him. On the other hand, these blood vials would have saved his life if Iosefka had some left and he wouldn't be a hunter. In the end, the blood vials made their way on the left side of his bandolier belt where several loops conveniently held the vials snugly.

He picked a direction and wandered off, wanting to explore the city for a bit before coming back to see Iosefka and thank her for her kindness. Perhaps some of this blood would be a good start. She needed it for her research after all and she had just ran out because of him.

The next couple men that Harry came across did the exact same thing as the first one did. Their minds were so torn apart that they kept attacking even when limbs were removed. He made sure to roll them for some blood vials and whatever else they may have in their pockets.

He only got sick five times in the process.

[Page Break]

After his tenth and most recent kill, Harry had to sit down on a barrel next to him. This one had been the worst so far. Not because it was a difficult fight, but because of how quick it went. Whereas just two hours ago, Harry could barely attack because he was still hesitant to fight. This time, he had the drop on her and had ended the fight before it could begin. The sight of blood did not bother him that much back in his world, but at the moment, he hated it. Not because it disgusted him, but rather that it was a testament of what he was doing. The last couple months of partially being in Yharnam had almost desensitized him to blood and death, but these last couple hours of killing these pitiful people had broken through.

He didn't even know what he was doing. He was just wandering around the city aimlessly, hoping to stumble across something to help him in his quest. He needed to stop the plague, but how? At the moment, all he had was a sword and a gun. He would need knowledge and a direction. All he could do at the moment was to try to be a hunter and just fight.

He hated it. He hated Gehrman more. the old man could have at least told him what he should have been doing. Instead he got fuck all from the old man and dismissed like a child.

A small rustle brought his attention back to what he had just done. A rat was sniffing at the woman he had just killed before it turned its nose up and wandered away.

The sight of the large gashes that covered her back made him heave to the side. She did not deserve what had happened to her. He shouldn't be doing this.

Not even three hours ago, he had almost sworn to Gehrman that he wouldn't kill another human being, but here he was, ending the life of a madwoman without calling it self-defense.

"What has did city done to me?" Harry muttered as he gathered himself. "I was never like this before the curse... was I?" He remembered several times back in his childhood, but stopped before he could fall into his memories.

He did not want that answer, he did not think that he could live with himself at the moment if he found that he was always like this. Having the city as a corrupting influence put him more at ease than knowing that he was always capable of such things.

He looked up in the sky and was surprised to find that the moon was only then just setting. He could have sworn that the sun should have been up for a while by that point. However, daybreak meant that Iosefka would be back at the clinic some time and he could perhaps make his way back. Running around without an idea of what to do would just get him killed... again.

The path back to the clinic was even longer than it was before. It looked like his previous kills had brought out the interest in some of the other city dwellers and they were rummaging around the corpses. Much to Harry's disgust, that meant that some of the more beastly looking ones were eating away at the bodies left in the streets. The sight of the cannibalistic men and women churned his stomach.

They were not too difficult to dispatch, but the number of them were what slowed him down. He had to wait and strike at the right time to keep his battles one on one. He was not confident that he could hold his own against more. The fights took a lot of time, but so did searching the bodies. He would rather not think about half of what he found on the bodies, but he did find enough blood vials that his bandolier was filled and he had to resort to storing them in his pockets. The same story with the bullets. He had also found several more coins and jewelry. He willfully suppressed his revulsion at taking things off the dead. The vials and bullets were one thing, but jewelry was another. However, he would never know when it would come in handy for a bribe or something.

He came to the clinic in time to see a woman pushing through the metal bars. Harry readied his sword in case she was another one of the infected, but her sure movements were unlike any he had seen so far in the infected.

Harry sheathed his short sword and walked out to the middle of the road, allowing her to hear his footfalls. She spun around with her pistol raised. This allowed Harry to get a better view of the woman.

Iosefka would have been considered beautiful if the city had not gotten to her. Her blue eyes were dark with regret and pain. Below her eyes were dark bags from her restless nights. Her face was marred by several small scars that could only have come from one of the beasts that Harry had been killing since he had woken up. Her hair was a dark blonde with grey streaks in it. It was a mess that looked like she had attempted to tame it at one point, but gave up.

Harry raised his hands up when she brought her pistol to bear. When she saw him not attacking she lowered it slightly.

"Who are you?" Her tired voice carried over to him. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm Harry Potter," he gestured to himself, lowering his scarf to show his face better. "I was the one that you saved earlier today."

"Impossible," The pistol that she had been lowering was once more raised up, "That boy couldn't be awake yet. The amount of wounds he had would have been impossible to fix, especially with my lack of blood vials. So tell me the truth, who are you?"

He nervously fidgeted his hands. He supposed that it would be hard to explain his miraculous recovery and, now that he thought about it, the change in outfit was strange too.

"I really am who I say I am," Harry carefully said, "I woke up a couple hours ago and left. I got a couple more blood vials and it fixed up what I could. You said that you would be back by sun-up so I came back."

At that she relaxed slightly, "So you did get the note," She said, "I know that I did not leave you those clothes though."

Harry played with the sleeves of his coat nervously. Using all the skills he got lying seriously to good use, he scrambled a story out of what he knew. "They're mine. I got caught out of uniform and unarmed by the beast. I just went back to get them back." Harry smiled nervously at the woman, who scoffed. Harry raised the armored scarf back up, having it down made him feel vulnerable. "I wanted to thank you for saving my life after I fell off that roof,"

"I'm a doctor, it's what I do," She said before beckoning him to follow her. "Come with me, I want to see if you are actually healed,"

"I'm fine," Harry responded quickly, "The blood healed everything."

Iosefka gave him a look that was reminiscent of Madam Pomfrey. He gulped under the gaze. "I'll be the judge of that,"

He really did not want to go back into the clinic, but he was not going to be rude to the woman that saved his life. He followed her down through the foyer and into the main sickroom where he had fought the werewolf.

The nurse stopped and stared when she noticed the large dead lycanthrope in her floor. She slowly turned and looked at Harry. "What happened?"

He smiled anxiously. She was even scarier than Pomfrey. Pomfrey didn't live in a plague infected city though. "I killed it?" He half asked, half told her.

"How did it get in?" She asked seriously. "And how'd you kill it?"

"The door was open when I got down here," Harry answered dutifully, "I killed it while it was distracted with its... meal."

She looked green when he motioned towards the torn remains of the man that had been in the room. The man who was formerly Brian did not make a clean mess after being eaten and tossed around like a ragdoll. They made their way up to the room where Harry had woken up. Iosefka attempted to keep her food down after such a gruesome sight.

The woman looked at her young patient and was surprised to note that he was not as disgusted by the sight as she thought he would be, especially as a foreigner.

They got to the sick room and went to a room beyond that to a sitting room. Harry looked around out the old fashioned room. It looked like something straight out of the victorian era.

"Um, ma'am," Harry began hesitantly. "I brought you a couple things as my repayment for saving me."

"I didn't save your life for payment," She shot back, "There are not enough of us left. We have to stick together."

Harry shuffled on his feet. "I still got you a couple things you may be interested in," He emptied his pockets of his extra blood vials and bullets. There were almost twenty blood vials on the table and forty rounds. Harry left the twenty of each that he had on his bandolier. "I found these off a couple of those plague infected men and thought that you could use them more than me."

Iosefka looked at the nervous boy that looked so much younger as he fidgeted under her gaze to the table of blood vials and bullets that would fill her supply more than it had been in almost three years and back again. It seemed as if he was seeking her approval more than anything.

"I could try and get more if it isn't enough," Harry voiced over her thoughts. She could not help, but note the slight shame in the voice as if he had not done something amazing. "I could run out and find some more, I'm sure that the dead would have drawn several out and it is still a little dark out so I could get a couple without being seen."

"No..." She was almost speechless as she gazed at the table. She had only managed to find five vials since she left last night and that was a good supply run. He had gotten twenty in what he said was only a couple hours. However the amount of blood that graced his young form definitely told a tale.

"This is... plenty. Would you like some tea?" She asked him as she moved to the other side of the room. It was the least she could do for him.

Harry nodded awkwardly at her, remaining where he stood. He was covered in blood and other muck and did not want to dirty any of her furniture. She went into a side room and suddenly there was a loud crash followed by the sound of metal clinking together.

Harry dashed into the kitchen and froze. Iosefka was on the ground unconscious with her head pouring blood and above her was another woman. This one had white hair and in her hand was a whip made of dozens of interlocking blades and a broken piece of wood.

Harry drew his blade and swiped at her before he could think about what he was doing. He would let this random madwoman kill the woman who saved his life.

He ignored the fact that she had intelligence in her eyes or moved with a purpose rather than the beasts he had been killing. That would just slow him down and speed was all he had.

She dodged out of the way of his swing easily and threw her arm up. The reversed gripped chain sword flew up and gouged a line up his back. He cried out in pain, but managed to twist out of the way as she pulled a gun from under her cloak and shoot it at him. He did not get away completely and his shoulder was winged by the quicksilver bullet, but it had not pierced his heart like it would have. Harry unhooked his sword by accident so when he swung it, he scored a glancing blow when the blades separated. Harry quickly grabbed the separated blade and had one in each hand. He dove forward and thrust them at the same time. The woman was quicker and rolled to his side where she planted the blade into the floor and turned the whip into a sword. Harry lashed out with a kick and pushed her back into the stove where she bounced off the iron surface before charging back at Harry.

A quick flash of metal and Harry felt his side light up in pain. Harry swung his swords clumsily again, but she was ready and parried all his swings until he was left open and stabbed him in the thigh. Once more Harry yelled out, but he did not stop fighting as he ducked under another one of her swings. He didn't have time to think about why she would avoid the killing blows despite having the skills to take advantage of his clusy swipes.

His back and leg felt like someone ran a hot poker along his wounds as he twisted and turned to desperately dodge the blade coming for him.

It seemed that no matter what he did, he was unable to gain a foothold in the battle and was slowly being taken apart by the much more experienced fighter. He rolled back as she converted her sword into a chain and sent it down at him. He luckily went under a table and it suffered the brunt of the slash. Harry rolled to the side when she collapsed the chain and stabbed at him.  
Harry fought off a cry as she scored another hit, this time on his arm, as he rolled from under the table. He jumped to his feet with a slash to keep her back and the instant he was standing, he was assaulted by quick lethal blows that were only narrowly blocked or dodged. The only thing that saved him was his reflexes.

As the fight went on he grew more and more tired. Once more, he failed to dodge another swipe and it headed for his throat. However, Harry trusted his armor to divert the sword enough to not kill him so he slashed with his left sword at her unprotected side. He carved a bloody line across her side and the metal plates in his scarf blocked the sword swipe like he hoped. He brought one of his swords down on the return swing and managed to hook the cane sword around one of the curves of his short sword. It sent both of the swords flying, but unlike the woman, Harry had a spare.

The woman swung her pistol around, but was stabbed through the chest before she could pull the trigger. She coughed up blood all over Harry's exposed face before sneering at him.  
A loud boom resounded around the room as she slid off his blade. Harry's hand fell to his side as he felt liquid flow from a new hole in his body. He stumbled back into a counter and had to hold himself up.

Harry groaned in agony as he dropped his blade and fell to the floor. His leg was mangled and the rest of his body was not much better. His eyes never left the dead woman as he scrambled for his blade just in case. He fumbled around and managed to get his second sword and locked them together once more.

Iosefka groaned as she woke up to the sound of the pistol going off. She looked around the room and noted the destruction. Almost every surface had a blade mark on it and her table was almost in pieces. There were sprays of blood along most of her walls and floors. Laying nearby was the body of the woman that had hit her over the head with a club. The body had several wounds on it, but the chest wound was the obvious killing blow.  
The scent of cordite drifted over from the body which snapped her out of her examination. She looked over towards the one that killed the woman and scrambled to get to her feet. It was hard though, as her limbs refused to cooperate with her. The amount of wounds on the boy were horrifying. Just where she was, she counted seven serious injuries in need of attention. Each were oozing a steady amount of blood that was coating the floor.

She noticed his wide eyed gaze as he stared at the corpse on the ground. His bright green, almost luminescent, eyes were the only thing that she could see on his armored form besides his hair. The rest was covered by the scarf wrapped around his lower face and neck. His body was sprayed with even more blood than what had already been there.

"Harry!" She stumbled over to him and grabbed his arm, only to draw away when she felt a warm fluid flow down it. She looked down and saw that her hand was drenched in blood, both new and old.

Harry ignored her. "I'm going out to get some air." Harry said in a daze before he turned and ran. As dazed as she was, she could see that if he left, than Harry would not make it. Iosefka tried to go after him, but the boy was moving too fast. She fell against the walls as she followed him, but her concussion made the act of running impossible.

She stopped at her front door when she saw his long jacket disappear around the entrance of the graveyard.

[Page Break]

The only thing that stopped him was the pain in his back and leg. If it felt like a fire poker before, now it felt like his blood had been replaced by molten steel. He slumped to the side, next to a strange lantern on the side of the road. It looked familiar, but Harry was too light headed to notice why. He fumbled for his belt and pulled out one of the smooth glass vials from his belt. He debated on using it before he shrugged. He could not think of a reason not to at the moment. The amount of pain that he was in was unbearable and the blood may soothe at least a little bit.

He pulled off the cork to reveal a needle. He debated for a moment, but decided a small pinprick was nothing compared to the hole in his thigh and jammed the needle into his uninjured leg. The blood flooded his veins and Harry was relieved of pain everywhere it flowed.

By the time the blood worked its course, his legs no longer hurt from the multiple wounds on them, but his back was still on fire. Harry popped the cork off another and stabbed it into his side. Like before, his wounds closed up and this time, the pain that he found himself in was manageable.

Now that he was no longer in unbearable pain, Harry looked over at the lantern and was surprised to find that there was a puddle of murky white water underneath it. It looked exactly like the water that housed the messengers. Harry dipped his fingers in it and immediately his hand was grabbed by the small bony hands of the messengers.

"Light... it..." It moaned from the depth before letting go. Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter he scavenged and lit the lantern. He reared back as messengers burst out of the puddle and circled around the light. "Connect... to it."

Harry put his hand on the lantern and immediately felt a connection with the hunter's dream through the lantern. He knew that if he willed it, he would be back at the hunter's dream in an instant. Just like with the gravestone.

The thought of leaving the city was tempting, but Harry couldn't do it. He could not go back and face Gehrman and admit that he had just killed a woman that had not yet turned into a beast or all the plague victims he had come across. He could not bare to have the old man look at him with knowing eyes and a smirk on his face, not now.  
With one last look and patting a messenger on the head, Harry went off to fight some more in the city. At least then he knew that he was doing the right thing and whittling down the amount of murdering psychopaths in the city. Maybe he could grab more blood vials for Iosefka. If he gave her those, maybe she would start to forgive him for killing that woman, someone who may have been violent, but she wasn't infected. What did Iosefka say? They were uninfected so they should stick together? The least he could have done was not turn around and stab the woman through the heart. He should have tried to not kill her, maybe work things out with her and everything could have been a misunderstanding.

He had read how much she needed those vials for her experiments and he saw how excited she was at just twenty. It wouldn't make her forgive him, most likely nothing would, but it could be a start.

The city had seen some better days. Ignoring the coffins, dead bodies, and murdering psychopaths that littered the streets. The buildings and roads were in near ruin from lack of maintenance. Now that the sun was up, Harry got a clear view on how broken the buildings actually were.

One good thing he found was that with the sun being up, there were not that many beastly men in the streets. They were like vampires in that regard, with the odd few stuck in the alleyways with nowhere to go. Despite that, they were still stark raving mad and he didn't have a shortage of people trying to kill him, there just weren't as many people and lycanthropes as before.

Gehrman said that he would begin getting used to hunting down the beasts, but Harry did not know that he would do so as quickly as he did. While he was still weak and unable to fight as much as he wished he could, he was able to take out some of the fringe enemies without too much of an issue. All of them attacked without a thought to their swings, many did not even have weapons. Harry had to take frequent breaks or he would collapse. The entire time, he focused completely on the job ahead of him and not what he had done. Every time he remembered light blond hair and brown eyes, he would push himself on, whether he was in any shape to or not.

In the back of his mind, he knew that he was going to make a mistake somewhere along the lines and get injured pushing himself like that. It was just a matter of time, but he ignored the risk.

By the time the sun was high in the sky, Harry was sweating a river under his heavy leather jacket. He was weighed down by all the small things that he gathered. His old hoarding tendencies, a remnant from his time with nothing, had come back hard. His pockets were filled to the brim with various odds and ends that he had picked up over the last couple hours. However that was not the only thing that he was weighed down with. He also had gathered much more of that energy that kept flowing to him from the dead. He still had no clue what the energy was.

He debated on heading back to Iosefka's, but he did not want to face her at the moment. He had killed one of the few sane people that he had met and no matter how small the risk, he could not stand to see the woman's tired eyes look at him in disapproval. She had saved him and this was what he did with the life she had given him? He had turned around and killed someone in her house.

The trek back to the lantern to go back to the hunter's dream was no more eventful than his earlier walk down the street. He couldn't in the city stay for much longer, he knew that would not survive it. Especially as he was now; he was exhausted and still did not know how to properly wield his blade.

The battles were training him better than anything else could, but no amount of them could teach him the foundations he was so sorely lacking. The only thing he was fully prepared to fight was the weakest and slowest of the madmen. He had seen some large brutish creatures that looked like a troll trying to fit in human skin and knew without a doubt that he would die if he stumbled into the path of one. The Dream was really his only hope at getting his swordsmanship up to par.

As he was walking the last block to the lantern, he lost himself in his thoughts. That would not have been bad at Hogwarts, but he was no longer in the safe school of magic. He was in a city where the mad roamed and danger lurked in every shadow. Rather than a small noise drawing him out of his thoughts. It was a rust covered cutlass finding a new resting place through his chest.  
Harry looked at the beast and coughed. It seemed that no matter how much he tried, he could not catch his breath. It was as if time slowed down. He saw the beast snarled at him and tense his arm to pull out the blade. Faintly he remembered that he read to never remove a blade from a wound since it acted as a plug to stop the bleeding. He weakly reached into his jacket and withdrew his pistol. The weapon was already cocked and ready to go so he was able to press it to the man's face before he could rip the sword from his chest. Harry couldn't even hear the sound of the pistol go off. All he could see in his fading vision was the large hole that formed on the bridge of the man's nose and a splatter of gore from the opposite side of his head. Harry fell back with the blade sticking out of his chest. When he hit the ground, the cutlass was shoved deeper into his chest, not that it mattered at that point.

Dying was a lot less painful this time around than it was with the wolf. Harry chuckled as he thought that. He was probably one of the only people that could say that without lying. Unlike last time, his body seemed to have just shut down and all he could feel was a dull ache in his chest. The worst part was his inability to draw a breath around the sword. It felt like someone had a grip on his lungs and was squeezing the air out. He wondered if this was what drowning felt like.

He struggled to sit up and reach for one of the blood vials attached to his belt, but his arms did not respond to his command. He painfully tried to draw in a breath and suddenly the pain that he had been missing hit him. If he could, he would be screaming. The amount of pain rivaled even the basilisk's venom that corroded the veins in his arm. He sucked in a breath with hope that it would get to his lungs, but all that came out was more pain and a wet cough.

His head managed to lull to the side and allowed him to see that his gunshot had drawn even more of the madmen to his position. The hungry look in their eyes fueled Harry to move. He desperately fought to grab his short sword and managed to bring it slightly off the ground. His muscles strained as he did so and his chest exploded into even more pain. His light sword felt like it weighed a ton and Harry could barely hold it up for more than a couple seconds.

The extra strain on his body proved to be too much and it just gave up on him. His vision suddenly disappeared and he felt his head hit the ground. However along with his vision, so too did the pain leave. The next moment, his brain shut down.

(A/N:

Why does Harry care so much about how Iosefka views him and why he feels so bad about killing someone? He cares what Iosefka thinks because she had saved his life and he wants to make it so that she would not regret doing so. As to the killing... Harry was always one to be guilty about something that he really had no reason to feel guilty about. Logically he would realize that he was not at fault or that it was self defence, but emotions do not always follow logic. Combine that with a series of world shattering events and his mind obviously would not be in the right place to rationalize some things out. So he panicked and refused to think about the issue which prevented him from coming to terms with what he had done.

As to why I decided to allow Harry to speak to the messengers... well I just wanted to give the little guys that are so important to allowing hunters to do their job a little limelight. It also showcases that there are unintended consequences to accepting the beast blood. I will also freely admit that I had some of the messenger's speech patterns come from the minions in Overlord, but more respectful since hunters are like walking idols to them.

On to Gehrman's characterization. I respect the man personally. He had sacrificed everything that he had and contradicted all his morals just to make it so that the future wouldn't be defenseless. However the man has been forced to murder his own hunters, many of whom may have been best friends, to give them freedom that he couldn't have. This would obviously have an effect on his personality. I felt that he would detest blood ministration because of all the pain it caused him and that led me to having him hate the doll because that was what she did. She gave him an outlet for his hate, the only one that he could have in the small plot of land he was trapped in.

As to the doll being human rather than doll. I don't see why she couldn't be. The moon presence brought an entire dimension into existence and made Gehrman and all his apprentices immortal. Who's to say he could not create true life for the doll.)


	4. Chapter 4:Blood Is Thicker Than Water

The scent of blood faded from his nose and was replaced with the same sweet flowery scent from the Dream. Warmth surrounded him with a mother's care and wrapped him in its soothing embrace. He imagined this was what it must have been like to be cared for by a parent. He drifted for an eternity in that embrace before falling away.

The sweet smell and motherly warmth was replaced by the metallic stench of blood and the cold wet paving stones of Yharnam's street. He didn't wake to the soft swaying grass and the quiet tranquility of the Hunter's Dream, there was nothing tranquil about the screams and howls of the damned.

His eyes shot open and breath flooded his empty lungs. He heaved as his chest protested the sudden inflation, but there was no pain besides that. He ripped open his jacket and pulled up his shirt in a mad scramble. Pale flesh marked with brand new scars met him, not a river of blood and gaping wound that cut through organ and bone. For a moment, Harry could see the jagged blade overlaid on the messy scar that decorated his chest. The feeling of drowning in his own blood as his chest was squeezed by an unseen god was much harder to shake off.

He ran his hand across the scar several times, but he didn't feel any pain that wasn't just in his mind. There wasn't even a dull sensation of damaged nerves, it was as if it never even happened. Physically at least.

Something had changed though. It was like a feeling that was always with him was suddenly gone. He did not care to look for what was missing as he calmed down his newly started heart. The metaphorical chasm in his chest was much less important than the physical one that healed.

He glanced around and found himself slouched next to the lantern that he had lit awhile ago. The connection to the dream must have anchored him back here. He debated just going back, but refused. His fatigue was gone so all incentive to go back and risk facing Gehrman had gone with it.

Hesitantly, Harry made his way back to where he had been killed. He didn't know why he picked that direction to head to first. Maybe it was to start where he ended off on or there was something greater urging him on. Regardless his feet took him to the place where he had breathed his last.

On the way there, a madman staggered out of a filthy alleyway and was cut down before he could do more than turn his blood addled eyes to Harry. The blade blade bit through flesh and cleaved bone before losing it momentum halfway through the man's chest. Blood sprayed from the wound, as his torso separated in two different directions, staining the ground a dark crimson. Harry's eyes barely wavered at the sight in front of him, the organ spilling out of the man's chest steamed in the cool air. His stomach turned slightly, but a larger part of him was just relieved that he had finished off the fight without getting injured again. This man would have done the same to him without hesitating so he couldn't either. He had to kill him to help the city.

At least that was what he told himself as he stepped into the puddle of blood to pass by the body. It was the same thing he had repeated to himself every single time he had ended the lives of one of these sick people. After his death though, those words rang much less honest.

As he walked away, the chasm that he had felt behind his breast bone was finally given a name. The echoes in his blood were gone, completely. Not a single one remained, not even the one that he had before he had begun all of this.

The weak echo he gained from his last target was nothing compared to his own, it made his chest tight at the thought of what he had lost. All that energy, all that essense of who he was, all gone.

He gritted his teeth and if his strikes against the next huntsman was more vicious than they had to be, the only one that could say otherwise bled out under the morning sun. The constant reassurance that he was only doing this for the greater good was temporarily silenced.

On the way, he noticed something odd. The fights leading up to his death were almost exactly the same as before except that Harry was able to dispatch them quicker now that he had fought a lot more of these small skirmishes. It was only when he got back to where he died that he realized just what was bothering him.

Everyone that he had just killed, he had fought before. Not figuratively, but literally. It had been hard to tell because — while he would prefer otherwise — all of them were starting to look the same with only their gender separating them. Each were dressed in similar filthy drab clothing, using farming tools and rusty weapons with wide mad eyes rolling in their sockets. All of them were disgustingly disfigured and covered in coarse hair.

What clued him in was that each of them had been doing the same thing as the last couple he killed. One or two would have been a coincidence, but upon seeing one of the beasts chopping the remains of another into pieces in the same place as before, making the exact same noises, solidified his thoughts. Harry had killed that one and checked his pockets. Inside was the same items as before, but when Harry checked his bag, he found that he still had them from before.

His suspicions were completely demolished when the next four beasts were exactly where they had been or around the same area with the same things in their pockets. If it was not for the fact that to truly test and see if what was happening to him was actually a method of time travel, was to die, he would have delved deeper into the ability.

As it was, he was sure that it had something to do with time. It would explain why he had not come across his body in the clinic. It hadn't been there because it had not happened yet. That could also explain why it took the sun a couple hours longer than he thought to rise.

He slowly trekked through the tattered streets, quickly filling up his pockets with various knickknacks and blood vials. He traced his steps back to where he died and this time he was not lost in thought as he passed by the alley way. He saw the stones that he had bled out on and killed on. Another tick to his time travel theory was that there was no body lying in the alley way, confirming his guess from earlier.

"Not this time, you bastard," Harry growled to himself as he pulled out his pistol with his off hand. Instead of taking a sword to his chest, he rounded the corner in a rush.

The man that had been crouched in the shadow of a box in a parody of hiding was not ready for that though. Harry surprised the man with a blade through his chest, exactly where he had been pierced through.

The man's blood shot eyes widened. He screamed loud enough to echo through the city as he struggled to back away. "Aye, it hurts. Trust me." He brought his pistol to bare and thrust it into the man's screaming mouth and pushed the barrel up. "This will fix it."

Brain and bone sprayed through the air behind the man, the antique firearm removed most of the man's head in a way that modern weaponry couldn't replicate. The echoing report of his weapon rung in his ears and his front was covered in bits of the man's flesh.

He looked into the man's dull eyes and noticed a slight glow about them before it was snuffed out. Blood quickly flooded out of the dead eyes as all the blood vessels in his head burst from the gunshot.

The body fell straight backwards and the skull deflated when it struck the ground and collapsed completely into itself. A pile of lumpy gore was the only thing left of the man's head. Satisfaction ran through him like a shot, but he rebelled against the feeling.

"No, no, that's not me." Harry muttered to himself and holstered his pistol.

A surge of blood echoes rushed through his body before settling down right where they belong. He checked and every single echo that he had lost was back in place amongst all the others that had taken up residence in his body.

He wondered why this was the same, but shrugged. He didn't know why he was able to go back and he doubted that he could understand it if it was explained to him. All because he had messed with a time turner before, didn't make him an expert on time magics.

Harry looked around cautiously and continued on down the street to continue trying to clear his mind and actually think about what he needed to do beyond just killing whoever crossed his path like a purposeless psychopath.

Harry found himself in front of Iosefka's clinic after a couple hours of wandering around the city. Since the sun had risen, the amount of beasts roaming the streets had dropped dramatically, enough that the townspeople were actually making sounds inside of their homes, but Harry refused to try and talk to them again. His last interaction left a sour taste in his mouth and a couple scars on his back.

He was hesitant to head inside though. He was not sure whether he deserved to go see her anymore. She had gone out of her way and risked her life to save him and then he repaid her by killing someone in her own house. More than that, he killed someone who still had her mind about her, a rarity it seemed in this city. He could just see the disappointed look on her face when he showed back up after he had ran away like a coward.

Knowing that he could not risk finding out about how Iosefka felt about everything, Harry turned around and went to leave. However before he could do so he was stopped.

"Harry? Is that you? You better stay right there!" He heard a woman yell, her voice was loud over the quiet graveyard he stood in.

Harry turned around and saw a furious Iosefka coming out of her clinic, a swath of gauze wrapped around her forehead. Harry flinched back and looked away from her. He knew that she was going to be angry at him, but he did not think that she would be so mad about what he did. Though he should have expected it.

The angry woman stomped over to Harry, who shrunk behind his scarf and looked away from the woman whom he owed his life. "I'm sorry," Harry said when she got close enough to him. "I'm sorry, sorry. I know that I shouldn't have killed her, I'm sorry."

His rambling apology stopped her short. "You think that I am mad about you killing that woman?" Iosefka asked. Harry did not want to look up to see her glare at him so he just nodded his head.

"I know that it would not make up for what I did, but I got you some more blood vials," Harry mumbled and held out his satchel. "I'm sorry. Please don't hate me, I don't want you to regret helping me."

Harry did not see it, but the moment that she heard what Harry said, Iosefka lost all the steam that she had built up in the hours that Harry had disappeared. "You went out and got blood vials even though you are injured because you thought that I'd regret saving your life?" She said quietly as she stepped closer. "Why in the name of the blood mother would I do that? I would never regret saving someone's life. I'm mad because you worried me when you just up and left."

She grabbed Harry's shoulder and gently began guiding him back to the clinic. "Come on, you never got that tea, when we sit down, we need to talk about what happened."

The tea that she had made just a couple minutes before going upstairs to check outside was still hot so she managed to force Harry into a seat, no matter how much he did not want to stain her chairs, and serve some tea.

While she was gone, Harry piled up the forty blood vials that he had picked up on the table in front of him along with a bag full of quicksilver rounds that he had picked up from some of the mad men with pistols.

"Now first of all," Iosefka started out. "Why would you think that I would have regretted saving your life?"

"I killed that woman even though she was not like everyone else," Harry said quietly as he fiddled with a stray blood vial. "She still had her mind and rather than subdue her, I stabbed her in the heart."

While he was talking, Iosefka could not help, but examine the strange boy in front of her. The wounds that he had accumulated from the battle in her kitchen seemed to have disappeared, yet there was even more blood on his body since the last time that she saw him.

"You seemed to have missed it, but she was trying to kill me," Iosefka said, placing a hand on his knee. Harry flinched slightly at the contact, but he did not make her remove her hand so she forged on. "I knew that woman. She had tried this several times before, but I've always managed to ward her off. If you had not been here I would have been dead and it would be quite hypocritical of me to be angry at someone that saved my life. So no, I do not regret saving your life."

Harry sagged in relief. The only person that he had met so far in this place that actually seemed to care about him enough to not literally throw him to the wolves was not mad at him. "Thank you," Harry responded, "For everything."

"I should be the one that is thanking you," Iosefka turned her incredulous eyes to the amount of stuff that Harry had brought with him. In a day, her supplies had gone from empty to overflowing. She would not have to be stingy about the blood usage so she could finally start her a few of her experiments up again.

Harry looked out the window of the room and saw the torn apart city outside of the window. He noticed a large plume of smoke in the distance and heard loud cheering and deranged screams coming from that area.

Iosefka saw where he was looking and frowned. "It looks like those monsters managed to actually kill a beast along with all the other people," She sneered as she refilled her tea mug. "This city has turned to ruin because of those men, but I can't blame them. It's not their fault."

The doctor swept her errant hairs back and yawned. Harry watched this out of the corner of his eye. His mind was telling him to go see what was going on over there and he wanted to get back out to see the city. If he was going to be haunting the place for awhile, then he wanted to know every nook and cranny that he could find.

"A cure for the plague needs to be found quickly, I don't think the city will last another ten years of this hell," Iosefka said to herself as she loudly drank her tea. "We are losing people too fast."

Harry jolted out of his thoughts when he heard that. Suddenly, he remembered the plaque that hung in the workshop and sighed. He placed his cup down on the table and stood up. "I need to go out there," Harry said, "I have a job to do now and I need to get to it."

"What job is this?" The blond hair woman raised an eyebrow at him. "From what I can tell, you just got here. I wouldn't have had to piece you back together if you didn't."

Harry attempted to smile at her, but after the last couple of months that he had, he couldn't muster the necessary energy, not yet. "I am a hunter, at least that's what I'm told" He told her shyly, carefully tasting each word before saying them. "In exchange for my life, I was told to hunt the source of the plague. I can't stop until it is found and eradicated."

"A hunter?" Iosefka drew away from him in shock and muttered under her breath. After a moment, she stared straight at him. "You're not here to kill me since you haven't tried yet, I'm going to trust that you won't do so in the future, so can I ask something of you?" She eventually said after much contemplation. When Harry nodded his head, she took a deep breath and carried on. "I don't want to get in the way of the church's business so I won't make you do this, but can you drop by every now and again? It gets lonely out here in the middle of the plague zone and this is the first time that I have had tea with someone that wasn't dead in a long time."

Harry managed to make his smile less broken and Iosefka seemed to lighten up slightly. "Sure," He said easily. He had no idea what this church business was about, probably something that Gehrman didn't tell him. "I can stop by when I am in the area, but I gotta get going."

They bid each other farewell and Harry made his way out of the clinic by himself. Iosefka was left in the sitting room with her mug to tea. Harry was not around to see her turn to her cabinet on the other side of the room and pull out an amber liquid from within. "A hunter that doesn't want to kill everyone?" Iosefka snorted to herself as she poured a healthy amount of the liquor into her cup. "Who would have thought? When did they start so young?"

* * *

Finding his way to the crowd of screaming city dwellers was easy. Their screams had drawn all the beastmen that wandered the streets to their loud carrying on, so Harry was not forced to put down any of them on this journey. This gave him time to admire the look of the city for the first time.

Underneath all the blood and grime, the city looked like old London. There were obvious differences, but Harry would not have been shocked to find this kind of city in history textbooks. If it was not for the lycanthropes and mad men, he would have thought that he was thrown back in time. That idea was still on the table, but Harry did not think that was the case, but he left it an option.

The great fire was a block away when Harry finally got sight of what exactly was going on. In the middle of a large street was a bonfire. In the middle of the bonfire hung a lycanthrope that was much like the one that he had killed in Iosefka's clinic, but this one was much larger. The crucified beast was surrounded by no less than twenty men and women that were all screaming as they circled around the fire. Most of them were frothing at the mouth with frenzied eyes and pounded their weapons into anything that they could find in some parody of celebration.

Harry had thought that he may have been able to take one or two of the stragglers, but he could not risk having the might of the crowd fall on him. Besides, he did not go there to fight, more to scout out what was happening with the locals and what he could expect. Harry used the cover of the shadows from the tall buildings to move away from the crowd. He may not be to the point where he could take on such large crowds, but he did have the ability to move unnoticed, a skill he had been fostering years before coming to Yharnam and it had only been honed even more in this city.

As he was jumping from shadow to shadow to maintain anonymity, he felt something sharp hit his back. It was blocked by his coat, but as much as his coat could deflect, it was not able to nullify the kinetic energy of the blow and he was flung forward off of his feet.

He rolled over to see what attacked him and noticed that it was a woman wielding a pitchfork. She was just as infected as everyone else he had come across in the city so her movements were just as predictable.

She released a scream and charged forward. As she jabbed the unwieldy weapon down, Harry was able to roll out of the way and follow through with an attack before she realized that she missed.

His black blade stabbed the woman through her cheek and angled upward where it tore apart her brain. Harry did not dwell on the end of the fight, but rather the ones that would be coming soon. The attack had not gone without attention and Harry was forced to dodge as two more mad men began their assault. Finishing off the two was slightly more difficult because he had to focus on two, but in the end, Harry came out the victor, not without scratches though. Rather than stay around for more people to show up and attack him, Harry limped away as quickly as he could.

His wandering brought him back to the lantern that he had lit and woke up at several hours ago. At the base of the lantern were several messengers, swaying in the late summer breeze. Harry greeted them with a growling hiss that he was only just beginning to distinguish from English. They responded in kind as they excitedly hopped up and down in their puddle.

Done with the city and thoroughly shaken from the venture, Harry grabbed the cold lantern. Just as he had felt when he had touched the gravestone the first time, he could feel the connection with the Hunter's Dream. Rather than just let the lantern draw him in, he pondered on the feeling for a moment. He wanted to understand what the method of transport felt like before he allowed it to do its thing. However, his knowledge was limited and all he got was an impression of what connected the lanterns and dream.

It was like the lantern was a doorway and key to moving through space that shouldn't exist. Like he was taking a step sideways and backwards to go forward. The twisting and non euclidean angles of this pathway seemed to change constantly as he felt them out. The shifting, alien pathways became too much to look at and he immediately let go of the lantern's metal housing.

Shaking off the hints of a headache, he opened himself to the connection quickly and fell into the feeling of the Hunter's dream.

His eyes were closed as if he had blinked even though he could have sworn that he kept them open. He breathed in deeply when he found he could no longer smelled rot and decay and immediately relaxed.

"This has the be the best magical transport ever," Harry mumbled to himself as he rose to his feet. Compared to the hook behind the navel that categorized the portkey or the tumbling from floo travel, the subtle shift of using the gravestones and lanterns was much better. As long as he didn't think of the mechanics at least, but he never thought about how the other ones worked either so there was no problem there.

It had even cleaned his clothing he noticed. Harry smiled lightly to himself as he stretched his sore muscles. Even though he had fought sparingly over the last day of being in the city, he was still rather untrained and needed to get to the point where he was not worn out fighting such easy opponents.

"Welcome back good hunter," A serene voice said behind him. Harry slightly jumped as he turned to see the woman that he still did not have a name for. "I trust that you have an enlightening trip?"

"Yes, it was... something," Harry rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. He felt some small calluses on his hand as he did so. For the first time, he actually looked at his hand. It seemed that the blood had healed a bit more than he had thought when he fixed up some of his injuries. He did not seem to have to deal with blisters as long as he took blood every now and again. At least that was something that he did not have to worry about during his upcoming training.

"Was it not to your liking, hunter?" She cocked her head to the side.

Harry looked at her incredulously before shaking his head. Harry knew that she must have understood what he had faced, but hearing and seeing was too very different things. "Not in particular," Harry answered as he took a seat next to the woman. "Everything here is so strange."

She tilted her head to the side and her moon colored hair spilled out of her bonnet slightly. "If you don't mind, how do you mean?"

"Where I come from, there is no blood plague... we don't have anything like Yharnam. Nothing comes close to that hell."

"Oh, that sounds like a wonderful place, hunter," She said with a gentle smile. "How I wish that I could see such a place."

"Yeah, it was wonderful, but it still had its evils. They just weren't as obvious or wide-spread," Harry knew that better than most. "Also, please call me Harry."

She nodded her head hesitantly and reached down to her feet where a messenger was falling over the hem of her dress. The small skeletal creature clung to her sleeve as she brought it up to her chest. Its small muscleless legs dangled in the air as it nuzzled into her arm happily.

"I got some blood echoes and you were right about it being hard to explain what they are." Harry eventually said as he watched several messengers crowd the two of them. "Are they the souls of the dead? Or something else?"

"Blood echoes are the echoes of lives and the imprint they have made on the world. One who has done much has a larger echoes then one has accomplished nothing. The death of a host will transfer the echoes to the one that ended their existence" She said looking straight into Harry's eyes. Her golden irises drew him in as she spoke. "Long ago, hunter's learned how to utilize these echoes to empower their own existence. I am one of the few that can use the echoes of many to empower the echo of one."

"So you can use the echoes that I found to help make me more powerful?" Harry asked slightly bothered by the practice. To take the energy of a living being to improve himself? It seemed too much like dark magic to him.

However, he had to get over it if he was ever going to escape from this madness. He could not expect his untrained weak body to be able to hold up for long against more powerful foes. The only reason he had died once rather than countless times was how simple the enemies he had fought were.

"Indeed, dear Harry." She said and reached out her hand to grab his hand before drawing it back. "I'm terribly sorry. I did not ask before trying to touch you, forgive me." She quickly muttered as she drew into herself. The messenger in her arms was confused at the sudden movement and looked up at their mother.  
"You don't need to ask if it is something as simple as touching my hand or something." Harry was startled by how much she reminded him of how much he used to be before he had gotten to Hogwarts. With that in mind, he kept his voice quiet and smooth so that he would not make her any more fearful than she already was. "Please calm down, I'm not going to hurt you."

She nodded before she took a deep breath and managed to cease the small shaking of her hand. Slowly as if he was about to retaliate, she reached out and touched him. Her hands were warm as they cautiously touched the back of his hand.

"Touch is necessary for me to understand your abilities and what I can improve," She said as she grabbed more of his hand and held it as she began to the process that would lead to improving his body. "Just a moment."

Harry watched her as she closed her eyes and figured out what he could do which would be key to improving what was already there. It took almost a minute before she finally opened her eyes. "You have amazing speed at reacting to something along with an abnormal ability with the arcane. Not that it is a bad thing!" She cringed and let go of his hand immediately. Harry grabbed her hand before it could retreat any further and stopped her from pulling away.

"I'm not angry," Harry said soothingly, "You are just telling me my abilities, there is nothing wrong with that."

His words seemed to do their job and she calmed herself down. She sighed and relaxed before she let the messenger who seemed to have fallen asleep in her arms down so that she could direct her full attention to Harry.

"Other than those two, most of your other traits are... below average," She flinched, but Harry felt that it was progress when she did not try to pull away. "Your vitality and strength are low, as well as your endurance. Your weakest trait is your bloodtinge, which governs how well quicksilver and hunter tools improves in your presence. Tis strange how low it is."

When she had listed that he was above average in his reaction time, he had gotten hopeful that he was not as bad off as he first thought, but it turned out that beyond his obvious affinity towards magic, he was not quite as well off as he hoped.

"May I recommend something, dear Harry," She quietly spoke up and seemed to perk up when he directed his attention on her without violence. "I have met many hunters and some of them have similar... weaknesses. They were able to fix them by improving their vitality and strength. That way they could fight longer and attack quicker. However, focusing on removing every deficiency instead of improving your strengths have lead several to ruin. Increasing your bloodtinge may cause further problems the longer the hunt goes on. You don't have to take my advice though, I am just a doll."

Harry agreed with her assessment. While she did not seem too confident in her answer, she had more experience than anyone else in this matter so he decided to take her advice. When he nodded his head, she smiled and clasped his hands between her own and bowed her head until her forehead touched his own.

It was a strange feeling that flowed through his chest. He could feel the blood echoes that were housed there begin the shift and move as if they were coming alive. It was not unpleasant, but it certainly did not feel good. Then the blood echoes seemed to escape their housing and surged throughout his body. A high concentration stayed in his chest and he could feel his heartbeat get stronger while at the same time he felt most of them begin saturating his body as they dug into his muscles and bones.

Then came a burning sensation. It was not unlike passing too close to a torch, but instead of his skin getting hot, it was inside his body. As quick as it happened it was over and Harry felt better than ever. His body felt lighter and all the weight that he had been enduring with his armor and weapons seemed to just disappear.

He opened his eyes and blushed lightly when he noticed that the beautiful woman he had been sitting with still had her head pressed against his own. Her soft breaths blew against his face and Harry was struck by how pretty she was. Harry shifted slightly, but that was enough to cause her to fall forward. Harry froze when she fell against him and rested her head on his shoulder.

Harry was scared for a moment that she had hurt herself in the process of channeling the blood echoes to change him, but then he heard light snores that were almost too quiet to hear come from the woman resting in the crook of his neck. Harry would have began laughing there and then if it was not for how embarrassed he was. He honestly did not know how to react.

"Umm... excuse me? Ma'am." Harry gently shook her shoulder as he tried to keep her from falling to the side. "Please wake up,"

She started and leaned back as she woke up. Harry watched as she leisurely stretched and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She looked over and noticed that Harry was looking at her and yelped in embarrassment as she realized what she did.

She huddled into herself and a blush quickly colored her cheeks. She tugged on the ends of her pale hair nervously. "I'm sorry," She said into her shawl. "I get tired when I channel echoes and it has been awhile since the last time I did so."

Harry noticed that she was blurry and took off his glasses, when he did so, it was like night and day. Suddenly he was able to see everything clearly, much better than he ever had before. He wondered if others saw things like this everyday. He wrapped the glasses in a spare piece of cloth and stuck them in his pocket as he looked around in shock. He could actually seen things far in the distance and it wasn't blurry like he was used to.

"This is amaz- ow!" He yelped as he spoke. The taste of copper flooded his mouth from the hole that he had accidentally opened up on his lip. A quick check showed that his canines had grown longer and when he reached up to feel his lip, he realized so too had his fingernails sharpened and changed. He looked as his fingernails in surprise. He did not think that would have been part of the enhancement.

He spoke carefully to avoid more holes in his lip and asked her, "Did the blood plague transfer over from the echoes?" Harry had read about what happened when hunters succumb to the blood in Iosefka's journals and he would rather kill himself than become such a monstrosity.

"No, dear hunter," She answered as she slowly took his hand and rested it in her lap. "Those imbibed with paleblood are immune to the taint of the blood. You will never fall under its influence, but it has some side effects, no more than what is already displaying."

Harry breathed a sigh of relief at her answer. "Thank Merlin," Harry said, "I was worried for a second."

"Don't fear," She said as she moved closer to Harry, "I would never cause harm to you."

"That's good to hear," Harry breathed out. He normally wouldn't believe someone who said that, but there was something about her that made him trust her when she said that.

He froze when he realized something. "Does that mean that the paleblood can cure the plague?" Harry asked her quickly.

The woman looked down at him sadly before shaking her head. "No, the immunity comes not from the blood, but the contract to the dream and only one hunter may enter into apprenticeship at a time."

Harry tried not to let the disappointment he felt show. If the cure was in his blood, than he would just have to find a way to distribute it out and he would be done with all this. No luck though, not that he thought it would work anyways.

The two of them got to talking about nonsense. Harry managed to worm some information about the dream from her, in exchange, he told her about his school in the more general sense of it. He abstained from talking about the magic, but he was able to tell her about the people that he knew.

Eventually Harry had to bid her farewell. He didn't want to, but he couldn't spend forever talking with her. "I have to talk to Gehrman about what happened in Yharnam."

"I will be here when you return," She gave a small wave before she froze and seemed to fight herself about something. "Good hunter, would you accept this gift?"

She held up a small woven grass bracelet with several small flowers spaced throughout the accessory. When Harry took it and slipped it on, her smile could not be described as anything less than radiant.

Getting to the old man was not difficult. The man had a presence about him that was hard to miss. It took a lot for Harry to suck up his feeling about the man to ask him for help. It felt like he was about to go to the Dursley's for help and he would rather cut off his own arm than do such a thing.

The man noticed him immediately and spun around in his wheelchair. "What do you want boy?" The old man sneered as he blew out a ring of smoke on his pipe. Have him put on weight and turn purple and it was as if his uncle was right there.

Harry suppressed his rage and answered as calmly as he could. "Since you got me into this mess, I think that you could at least train me so that I don't die. No matter what you said, I need help." Harry said bluntly, it was the best that he could do. Just asking for help was like acid on his tongue. "At least tell me where to begin."

Harry thought the man was going to think it over when he went silent, but that idea was thrown out the window when the man just scoffed at his request

"You think that I could teach you how to dodge and fight like this?" He sardonically gestured towards his legs. "You should have a brain between those ears so use it, unless you are truly as weak as I think you are. Go find a journal or something from one of the _successful _hunters that used to be here."

Harry ignored the jab at his abilities, knowing that the best thing that he could do was just roll with the blows. Besides, he knew that he was not really that good of a hunter since he had only been on the job for a day. The man waved towards the corner of the room with the oldest and newest leather books on them and turned around to go back to what he was doing.

As much as he hated to admit it, the man's advice had some merit and he did not want to let his hate blind him. The journals were probably his best bet in figuring out what he had to do. He left the old man to his business and looked for help that came in the form of several leather bound books.

What followed would have made Hermione proud. He hunkered down and actually studied for once like she had tried to get him to do for years. His various excursions into the library before all this was just a precursor to this event. All it took was him dying to have it sink in that he needed all the help he could get.

He never denied that he was too stubborn for his own good.

Fortunately Gehrman decided that it would not be worth it to try and bother him while he was studying which was perfect because Gehrman was currently at the top of his shit list at the moment. He had essentially forced him to be a hunter with a contract given when he was at death's door then refused to train him beyond throwing him to the wolves and making him fight.

In his attempt to learn, he grabbed many of the beginning journals of hunters to see if he could see how they started out and worked up from there. He was not alone studying though. After several hours, the self proclaimed doll had joined him at the desk he commandeered for his work. Her help was invaluable when it came to sorting out the trash from the gold, though she could not read so he had to say the names out loud. Since she had personally met the men and women he was researching, she was able to pick out the hunters that he could learn the most from. She steered him away from the hunters that died early in their career and showed him the most successful hunters there were.

* * *

He spent over three weeks sitting in the workshop, pouring over books. He found that he did not grow hungry while he was in the Dream so there was no reason for him to stop his research. He couldn't stay up that long though, his days turned into sleeping and studying with only practice in between. One or two times he had made some food from the ingredients that mysteriously appeared in the dream's kitchen, but that was only to break the monotony.

The only interaction he had was when his new friend, the caretaker of the Dream, came over to where he was reading and making notes after she finished her duties. Gehrman interrupted him several times during his research, but he mostly kept to himself.

Using the new information he had gathered, Harry learned several training techniques that he never would have thought about otherwise. He and his companion came up with a training regime that was tailored for the fighting style that he felt was perfect for him, at least in his amateurish opinion.

By sacrificing strength for speed and ignoring his pistol in favor of sword training, both dual wielding and singular, he played to his strong points, but he left himself open for several weaknesses. He would never hit as hard as he wished or manage to shoot a pistol with anything more than a modicum of skill, but what he could do, he would be good at. He had debated on learning what this world considered arcane to make use of his magic once more, but a single journal from this world's so called mages was enough to deter him. Their magic was less drawing on the power themselves and more drawing on other beings to draw on the power to do what they wanted.

He would periodically think of Hogwarts and all his friends when he wasn't throwing his all into work. During the day, Harry was able to escape the thoughts as much as possible by just ignoring that such a part of his life existed. It, at least, allowed him to function and not slow his training any more than it already did. He could not do the same thing when he was laying in bed, when there was nothing to keep him distracted and he would be forced to remember everything that he left behind.

He had thought that he was finally getting somewhere in his life. The Dursley's rarely interacted him anymore after last year where they figured out that while Harry could not cast spells, his magic could still work. He had two friends that would follow him to hell and back with several acquaintances that he could count on if he was ever in need. Him being cursed had brought all of it crumbling down.

Now he was stuck in a dream that was occupied by an embittered old bastard and a woman that said bastard had brainwashed into thinking that she was a subhuman servant. His only escape from that was the city full of the dead and damned where he would be forced to murder what used to be people to keep the remaining few alive. The longer he was away from his friends the worse that it got, but one thing that kept him happy was knowing that it was him who had been cursed and no one else.

He would not wish this on anyone. Not even his enemies deserved to have this happen to them. He couldn't bare the thought of having anyone else in his dorm getting cut by the sword.

Out of everyone that could have been cursed, he was the best choice in the end. He could shoulder this burden, the rest would be crushed. Neville would have broken easily under the mere threat of violence, he just didn't have the temperament for this. He would have been a gibbering wreck before he had fully transitioned over. The rest were not much better. Dean and Seamus could fight, but they would not try to learn, just keep plowing ahead until they couldn't anymore. Ron would try his best after realizing just how dangerous everything was, but he didn't have it in him to callously throw aside all his morals and fight like an animal. They were too gryffindor where a slytherin was needed.

By the end of the three weeks, he had finally found that he was progressing with his skills and his body was getting into better shape than he ever thought he would be. Harry knew that he was growing in strength at an abnormal rate and his only explanation was that the blood he consumed every day coupled with his paleblood enhancing his body in more ways than the obvious. He seemed to skip over the healing and rest phase of strengthening himself by using the blood, so he was constantly getting better.

While he figured that it was the end of the third week, he really was not sure. It was hard to tell time on the island where it was forever dawn, so Harry fell asleep only when he felt that he could no longer go on. He had become used to days longer than 24 hours over the month. So the three weeks that he guessed that he was training throughout was probably closer to five weeks than anything.

Harry had finished up his training for the day and had washed off before going to bed in his assigned room like he did after every training session. The hot water came from nothing, but Harry wasn't going to fight it. The same could have been said for Hogwarts and he had long since become immune to the strangeness there.

However this time, when he fell asleep, he did not wake up where he left off, he opened his eyes to find crimson drapes lining his vision and a canopy over his head. Both of which he did not have at the workshop.

He nearly burst out into tears of relief when he realized that he was back at Hogwarts and no longer trapped in that nightmare. He rolled over and hugged his pillow to his chest and did his best to muffle his laughter.

Harry looked back up at the canopy in joy. There was no way any of that was real, it all had to be a nightmare. When he got up he was going to have to go to Dumbledore and talk to him about what had been happening to him. That dream was much too vivid to be anything other than a curse. The old headmaster should have a solution to his problem and he no longer would have to go back to that hell any more.

He rolled off his bed and hit the floor silently, but he stopped before he could continue. In the pale moonlight he caught a glimpse of his hand. He saw that his fingernails were rather ragged, but that was not what drew his attention. His fingernails were all also brought to a point. He quickly spun his hands around and found that his palms were coated in callosus that he distinctly remembered getting from wielding the Blades of Mercy as Gehrman called them. Hesitantly, he looked down and noticed all the scars that had been added on his torso, neck, and arms. Underneath those scars were the muscles that he had been honing for weeks in the fields of the Hunter's dream.

Rather than let loose a scream like he wanted to, his new found instincts — born from creeping through the city of the mad — kept him quiet. He fell back onto his bed and emptily stared upward as he tried to come to terms with his new discovery.

Everything that he had been through was not an elaborate dream. It was real, it always had been. He looked around and found that his uniform was piled up at the head of his bed along with his satchel that had held everything that he had collected in Yharnam. He shakingly opened his pouch and found that most of the things he carried in it was still there. All the blood, the bullets, the gold, and the odds and ends that he had picked up were all piled in the pack. All of it taunting him, reminding him of the horrors that could be found in the world beyond his dreams.

He looked for his blade, but it wasn't there. He checked under everything before a halting snore drew his attention. The irish boy rolled in his sleep as if he knew Harry was looking at him. His sword didn't come through because it was already there. He was tempted to break into his chest and steal it, but held himself back. There was no reason, he was in hogwarts.

He took out a vial of blood and held it up to the light, trying to convince himself that it was just a hallucination. When he pulled off the stopper and injection needle, A quick sip and he felt the cooling rush of the healing blood, it was completely real.

It took him almost an hour to convince himself to get out of bed and make due with what happened to him. He could not go to any of the teachers about his problems. In doing so, they would probably come to the wrong conclusions and make everything worse. Dumbledore may be able to help him, but if he ever learned about Harry's time in Yharnam and all the plague victims he had to put down, than he could see the old man's bleeding heart end with him in prison.

Luckily, he was able to remember that it was Saturday so he did not have any classes. If he was going to get anything done though, he would have to spend as much time as he had left at Hogwarts, researching and figuring out several issues that he had run into in Yharnam and the Hunter's Dream. That meant that he could go to the library and figure out how to figure out how to cast a rare branch of magic in just a couple days. He would not be leaving the library for a couple days.

By habit, he dressed in his armored clothing. When he realized what he had done, he began taking off the clothing of the cursed city, but in doing so, he became anxious. He felt as if he was just tempting fate to stab him in the back and quickly through everything back on and wrapped his scarf around his throat. He felt marginally better with the suit on, but he still felt unprotected without his weapons.

He was happy to have his wand back, but if he was honest with himself, he was not that good at combat magic. He was ahead of other fourth years, but he did not know too much in the ways of actually fighting with magic. His wand was the main reason that he needed to go down to the library. The rare branch of magic he needed to learn was wandless magic. Since his wand disappeared every time he took a trip to Yharnam, he needed to learn magic that did not need a wand to use. He could not give up one of his most useful attributes solely because he no longer had his focus.

He adjusted his scarf to cover up the lower part of his face so that any hint of his new scarring was hidden without a chance of being found. He threw on his robes to hide some of his changes, but it didn't completely hide his new outfit. Now that he was ready to leave and his roommates were just getting up, Harry began his trek to the library. Deciding to forgo the rules, Harry took off at a sprint. He was fast before he was enhanced and trained, now his feet barely touched the ground as he took off down the halls. He needed to begin as soon as he could so that he could memorize what he found and practice it when he was drawn into the dream.

He arrived at the library just as it was opening up. He stepped through, slightly winded by his run through the castle. He was getting in better shape, but he still needed more training before he could sprint for long periods of time without getting tired.

While he never really found joy in reading magic textbooks, he did know the library like the back of his hand. After all, when one was friends with Hermione, being able to navigate the maze that Hogwarts called a library was essential for finding her.

It had been no less than fifteen hours since he had arrived at the library. He had not left for anything. He ignored how empty his stomach felt and how tired he was. He could eat later, but for now, he was busy. He refused to fall asleep in case he would be brought back to the nightmare he had been trapped in without figuring out anything for his magic.

He had found books on the theory of wandless casting relatively quickly and took every single one of them to a table in the back of the room and began reading. The books were made for students and researchers that already had a firm grounding on magic theory, something that Harry was shaky at best with. However he did not let that stop him, he just needed to grab several books to help him understand what was being said.

There was a veritable mountain between him and the rest of the world. In front of him was the most useful text that he had read so far in the day, mostly because it actually got into the application of wandless magic and how to do it.

Wandless casting was not much different than normal casting, the only reason that it was so obscure was just how power intensive it was and the myths that surrounded the subject. Wandless casting removed the wand obviously, but it was everything that removal entailed that was the main issue. Without the wand, casters no longer had the aid of wand movements to direct the magic or the power channel that the wand opened. Everything had to be done by hand perfectly or the spells would collapse which was why Harry had to shore up his knowledge on theory. He needed to have the will to cast the spell along with the concentration to shape his magic perfectly. With wandless magic, there was no half assing the casting and still having it work like there was for normal casting. Either he could cast it or he couldn't and that was just step one to learning wandless magic.

He decided to not try and cast until he understood the foundations completely, that way, there would be no bumbling for an answer when he did not have the time to do so. It was almost eighteen hours after he arrived that he had to leave due to curfew. However he would not let that stop him from researching, so he checked out four of the books he was reading through and took them to an empty classroom that would be perfect for researching and hiding. That way he was close to the library when it opened and he would be able to read to his heart's content without any distractions.

Harry finished the fourth book just as curfew was being lifted. There had been several close calls where some teachers or prefects had gotten close to his room, but nobody looked in to see if he was there.

He was the first into the library yet again and returned all the books to Ms. Pince. He must have looked like hell even with his cleaning and freshening charms because even the normally uncaring librarian looked at him with concern. Harry went back to his table and pulled out every single book that he could remember taking out and even more now that he understood what he needed to learn more of.

Harry lost track of time just as quickly as last time as he forced his way through as many books as possible. It went slower than yesterday, since sometimes he would have to reread chapters since his mind was starting to wear down under all his fatigue. He made sure his notes were perfect though. He couldn't take all these books with him to the Dream, but maybe he could bring his notes with him to practice with before he had to go back.

"There you are!" Harry was startled out of his book by a loud female's voice. It was shrill and full of frustration. He was slow when putting a face to the voice so he was surprised when he saw that Hermione was next to him.

He looked around and noticed that it was way past noon and he could see the waning light of the sun peeking through the high windows of the library.

"Harry!" Noticing that Harry's attention was wandering, Hermione shouted before quieting down when she noticed the librarian's harsh glare, "We have been looking everywhere for you! Where have you been?"

Harry looked around at the table he occupied and the dozens of books that he had pulled off the shelves, many of which were opened as he cross referenced them. "Here," Harry muttered slowly, his voice coming out quiet and rough from disuse. He took a glance at the book lying in front of him and his tired eyes immediately started to read through the page he had left off on.

It was only when Harry turned the page that Hermione realized that he was no longer paying attention to her. He seemed to have actually forgotten that she was there.

"Harry." She watched as he jumped in his chair and his head shot up. "What's wrong? We did not see you come back to the common room and Ron said you never came back to bed. Why are you wearing that suit and not your uniform?"

"I... I..." Harry said before he lost focus on what he was doing and went back to reading through the book. He needed to figure out everything that he could before he left again. Hermione snapped her fingers in front of him and moved the book away from him. She closed it while leaving her finger in it to mark his place. "I was busy," Harry swept his arm out lethargically at the table. "I have to figure this out."  
Hermione leaned over the table and found that many of the books were about wandless magic and theory that rivaled the theory that many NEWT students read through. "Wandless magic? Why are you reading these?" She asked as she glanced through the technical jargon that littered the pages. Even she was having trouble understanding what was being said in them.

"I have to learn," Harry said as he ruffled his hair in frustration. He wished that he could tell his best friend that he had been drawn into a dream world where he had been blackmailed into becoming a hunter of men and beasts. However, she would probably either laugh it off or think that someone had put a curse on him that made him delusional. "I have to." Harry pleaded that she understood and did not fight him on this.

"Not to the point where you skip meals and sleep," Hermione scolded with her hands on her hips. "This is unhealthy, come on."  
Hermione reached down and grabbed his shoulder and tried to get him to move, but Harry pulled away from her hand. "No." Harry said shortly as he returned to his books.

Hermione was about to argue, but the boy that had been standing in the background the entire time decided to speak up for the first time since he had arrived with her. Harry had noticed that someone was there, but he had not paid attention to his presence beyond that it existed.

"Why are you acting like an ass?" Ron said blithely, "You dress up like a weirdo and now you are ignoring us for books. Whatever you are doing can't be that important."

When Harry looked over at his first friend, Harry felt an irrational swell of anger at the sight of the gangly teen. His mess of scars throbbed with phantom pains as he looked at the one that had caused everything to go wrong. He fought against his anger and forced himself to relax. It was not Ron's fault, it was an accident and the boy was just ignorant about what had happened to him.  
However fast he was able to suppress his anger, his best friend saw it before it went away. Hermione was curious about what caused such a reaction, but she was also scared of what could cause her friend to show that much hate. It was not like his usual glares like the one that he gave Malfoy. That was schoolyard anger, when she had seen that look in Harry's eyes, she thought that he was about to attack the redhead.

"Go away," His scratchy voice said before he brought his scarf up to this nose. It was only then that Hermione was able to see that the scarf had several segments of armor sewn into it. She could not think for the life of her where he would have gotten something, much less why he would think that he would need to wear it in a library.

Harry ignored his friend's protests in favor of going back to his textbooks and journals. He was close to finishing up the last book before he could finally begin his practice. He had a firm grounding on the theory behind very simple wandless casting along with several ideas of how to get the spells to work, but nothing would help him more than practicing. He could not do that until Hermione gave him his book back though.

With speed that defied his haggard appearance, Harry had his book back in a flash, leaving Hermione gaping at her empty hand. He turned to where he left off and began reading from there.

His friends stayed around for several more minutes to try and get him to leave, but eventually they realized that it was futile and left. Ron seemed angry at him for something while Hermione was just worried about him. Harry could care less about Ron at the moment, but worrying Hermione was not something that he wanted to do. He had to though. He was not going to draw them into what he was doing, he would die first.

That night, after he had been kicked out of the library for the second time, Harry went back to the room where he had spent the night last time. This time, instead of reading all the books that he had checked out, Harry decided to begin practicing his wandless magic.  
Over the course of several hours, Harry found out several things. One, that wandless magic was ten times harder to cast than normal spells and two that it cost about that much more to cast. He had been practicing the levitation charm since it was one of the simplest charms he knew and even then, it took him almost eight hours of constant practice to make it so that the spell didn't just collapse. He could not count the number of times that he had failed to cast the spell and wasted a boatload of magic with the failure.

It was like he was relearning magic all over again. With the new rules that he had no idea existed before and having to shape everything himself, he may as well have never cast the spell before in his life. A spell that he had cast hundreds of times before and the one that he knew the best, and he could barely get a feather to rise off a table.

When he was too tired to continue, he would sit down and begin reading. In an effort to keep himself awake and functioning, Harry had taken three vials and took sips of the healing blood while reading. Each sip was like taking a drink of coffee, the coppery liquid revitalized him the moment he drank it. It also managed to soothe the hunger that had been gnawing at him constantly.

At first, he was disgusted by the taste of the blood, but after hours of imbibing the liquid, he learned to ignore it. Towards the end of the night, he had even begun to not mind the taste. He still did not think that the blood was too appealing though.

The blood gave him the energy to continue his training and that was the pattern that repeated itself over and over throughout the night and the next day. While he could not constantly sip on the blood in the library or there would be some uncomfortable questions, he could sneak a sip here and there while attempting to use the wandless casting on a much smaller scale than last night. Rather than attempt to lift the tomes off the table, he strove to just turn the pages whenever he needed it. It was a fine practice of control and he could work his way up from there. It took awhile for him to get the hang of it though, but soon he was turning the pages without too much trouble, though he had to take several breaks to regain his energy for every book he went through.

If it took this much time and effort to learn, than no wonder it was such an obscure branch of spell casting. Even though he was only working on it for three days, that was still three days without breaks and his magic reserves were much deeper than most people his age. Had he only practiced an hour a day like a regular person, it would take three months of trying to flip a page and that was just to cast a simple spell.

He noted the time after several hours of remaining in his spot in the library. He was missing potions class, but he truly could not bring himself to care. All he was missing was some abuse from the slimy git and the inevitable failure that he would get from a slight mistake in his potion.

Madam Pinch came by every now and again, each time she got more and more curious about what he was doing in her library. She didn't stop him though, she was in charge of keeping the peace and managing the books. Harry sitting quietly did not break any rules besides maybe him missing classes, but she didn't know his schedule so she couldn't do anything without looking into the specifics. She didn't though, she was busy enough as it was.

Harry barely even noticed her passing by him by midday. He was exhausted both mentally and physically. Staying awake for three days was one thing, but researching and casting intensive magics near constantly for three days with little to eat was a different scenario altogether.

After another twelve hours in the library, Harry was almost dead on his feet. Rather than being strict and harsh like she usually was when removing someone from her library, Pinch was rather gentle this time and guided him out of the room, staying close to him the entire time. She looked concerned, but Harry barely noted it as he staggered off into the dark hallways.

He debated on continuing his magic practice, but decided that he was in no shape to continue. As much as he hated to say, there was not much he could do anymore before going back into the dream. He accomplished what he could and there was not much more he could do without forcing his body to go on. He was already on his last legs. He had managed to stave off what he could with the blood, but there was only so much he was willing to drink at a time.

Going back to the dream was as simple as laying back and allowing his body to do what it had been screaming at him to do for days.

* * *

Harry woke up warm and comfortable for the first time that he could remember since he arrived at Hogwarts. He did not have any aches and pains that demanded his attention. He did not have any new wounds that ached or something trying to kill him. He nuzzled back into his warm pillow and relaxed. The scent of flowers drifted through the air and along with it was a pleasant earthy aroma, something he recognized came from being around plants all day.

Harry froze when he felt several small things start moving around on his body. He felt them brush up against his side and stop as soon as they made it halfway up his body while one climbed on his stomach and collapsed on it.

He peeked his eye open and found that instead of something trying to hurt him, it was the exact opposite. Several messengers had decided to climb over his prone body and found various places to rest on. Harry looked up and noticed that the pillow that he had been resting on turned out to be his beautiful friend who he still did not know the name of. She insisted that he called her "Doll", but he still refused to call her something so degrading. It was not a name, but a cruel label put on her by a cruel man.

His friend seemed to have fallen asleep while waiting for him, something that happened quite often he found out. In a place where there was not much to do. While he was training, he found that she fell asleep very easily unless something had occupied her attention.

He used the arm that was not trapped under one of the messengers to hold the one that fell asleep on his stomach in place so that he could sit up without spilling him on the ground.

The sudden movement woke the woman up and she drowsily looked around before honing in on Harry, whose face was covered in a slight blush.

"Good evening and welcome back to the Dream, Good Hunter." She greeted him as she stood up and brushed off her dress. Harry followed her to his feet and found himself cradling one of the messengers in his arms. The small creature snuggled deeper into his arms and, while he did not share his friend's opinion that the messengers were cute, Harry could not help it if his lips twitched upward when he looked down at the skeletal being. "You did not wake when you arrived earlier, I hope that you did not mind that I moved you?"  
Harry felt that he was making progress when instead of collapsing into herself, that she just flinched slightly and the fearful look in her eye was much less pronounced than when he had met her for the first time.

"Not at all, thank you." Harry stretched what he could, the woman in front of him noticed and giggled into her scarf. It was a rare sound that was becoming more common the longer Harry spent around her. She reached forward and Harry passed the small messenger over to its "big mother".

"Why did I travel back to my home?" Harry asked her as they took their customary seats on the low wall next to the staircase. "Is there a time limit that I can be in the Dream?"

"What do you speak of?" She tilted her head to the side as she looked at him. "You left and came back, I apologize for not seeing you off."

"No, I didn't go to Yharnam," Harry informed her. "I went back to the school where I was brought from the first time,"

"I did not know that any links were lit at any school." She responded in confusion.

"No, I fell asleep in my bed here and I woke up in my bed there," Harry repeated. "I didn't use a lantern or gravestone, I just woke up,"

"Tis impossible, hunter," She said assuredly, "The dream only connects to lanterns and you. There is no other methods, maybe you just left yesterday and forgot. It oft happens. Sometimes when hunters leave, they return and it has been much longer than it was or shorter, in some cases."

"Yesterday..." said Harry, confused at the paradoxical response. "I left three days ago."

She nodded her head. "You left three days ago, and yesterday." She confirmed, confusing him even more. "Some hunters left for years, but returned the day after they left."

Harry's head was spinning at the confusing answer before his memories of his previous year came back to him. "Are you saying that every time someone leaves the dream, they come back a day later. No matter what? Even if they have been gone for years or a couple minutes?" He got a serene nod for an answer. Harry groaned quietly as he leaned back against the rock wall.

That must have been why it was still Saturday when he had gone back rather than more than a month later. He just thought it was because he had a particularly vivid nightmare, but it was actually just because he had gone backwards... sideways in time to Hogwarts. He hated time magic and anything to do with it. It was just too confusing.

He checked his bag to make sure of something and grinned when he saw a pile of paper and notebooks right where he left it. His notes for wandless magic was right where he left it and he could go over everything whenever he needed. He ruffled through the pages and read a couple pages of his rough handwriting to make sure everything was where he left it and grinned when it was.  
Next time he went back to Hogwarts, he would just have to make plenty of notes and put the practice on the backburner for the time being. He could practice all he wanted in the Dream, but now that his notes remained, making more of them was much more important.

Knowing that he could eventually go back to Hogwarts and that he wasn't just trapped in the dream forever was a weight off of his shoulders. Now that he knew that he was no longer leaving everything he knew and loved behind to go fight madmen in the streets of a city that was a world away, he could focus on the here and now while trusting that he would see everyone again.

Rather than try to sleuth out the twisted nature of time magic and temporally displaced dreams, he left for Yharnam after several minutes. He had been neglecting his new duty and in all of the journals, it spoke of how actually fighting was the best kind of training. One could do a lot with training, but not everything. It was not like they had to worry about death in their fights anymore.

Harry arrived at the lantern by Iosefka's clinic and immediately set off to take on several new challenges. To which he immediately lost to and got shot through the heart by a rifle toting madman.

Harry did not see him as he went down the street, the month of being at peace in the dream had sharpened his skills in combat, but dulled his paranoia that everything in the city was out to get him. The initial shot ripped up his armored jacket and tore apart his clothing, but he remained relatively unscathed as his armor did its job. He did not expect for their to be a second shooter though. The second shot pierced straight through his tattered armor and through his ribs, destroying everything in its path which included his heart. While laying on the ground, Harry found that the bullet wound did not hurt. It was more like a bucket of ice had been injected into his veins that started from his chest and spread throughout his body. Harry had read about shock before, but he did not think that it would be like this.

It was a much better way to go than a rusty cutlass.

Unlike before, there was no eternity in an endless void. All that he got was darkness before he woke up with a start at the lantern. His heart hammered in his chest as if to show that it was still there despite being destroyed. Desperately, he pressed his hand to his restored chest and managed to slow his breathing down and catch his breath enough to calm down. That was the third time he died. Harry did all that he could to suppress the bile that rose in the back of his throat. If he was going to be a single hunter against a horde of monsters, than he needed to accept that waking up at lanterns was not going to be a rare occurrence.

He sobbed quietly and buried his face into his scarf. He didn't want to die again, he didn't want to do any of this. He wanted to be stressing out over Quidditch and nagged at by Hermione to do his work, not getting used to being killed. He wiped away his tears and sniffed loudly.

He couldn't do this, not anymore. He was going to die, come back, and die again. He would do it ad infinitum until he accomplished his goal. There was no other choice anymore.

That didn't make the realization that he had to essentially accept that he was going to die and come back only to die again easily. It was, to put lightly, very hard to accept. How could anyone accept their continuous deaths? Most couldn't accept one.

He could only wonder what he did to deserve this hell. To forever be trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth; an eternity of pain and suffering, only ever able to see his best friends when his hell decided to allow him.

Even though he kept pushing himself to get up, he didn't. He just couldn't stand up and walk to his death again.

It was not until a stray corrupted citizen walked into his small alleyway that Harry moved. He dispatched the nuisance with ease, no gun to stop him. The spray of blood coated the wall and alley floor as her head rolled across the ground and out of the alley.

The kill brought clarity and Harry was able to push his thoughts away as the head had drawn the attention of several beasts. He ignored the part of him that was lamenting his lot in life in favor of the part that told him to fight.

The beasts funneled into the alley in a nice straight line for Harry to kill. Their weapons were long and clumsy, while his were almost tailor made for this.

Once the one sided bloodbath was done, Harry felt much better. He had managed to learn something new and work out some of his frustrations about his life.

He did not have to accept that he was going to die and be reborn, but he did have to deal with it regardless. It would happen and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He would just have to keep fighting until nothing could kill him.

A small battle in an alleyway was in no way enough to keep him from thinking, but he had a city of distractions just waiting for him.

His training in the Hunter's Dream had paid off beyond even what he expected it to. Before, he knew that he was not that good at fighting compared to some other people, but he did not know that he was so bad that a mere month of training would increase his abilities almost a hundred fold. He wished that was an exaggeration. Just knowing how to hold his swords properly was worth more than he knew.

He would have been killed ten times more than he already had if several movements had not been drilled into his head.

That was not to say that his enhancements did nothing and that everything was fine with his life at the moment. His enhancements were a godsend as well as a curse. He could fight longer and faster now, which lead to him no longer having to take breaks after each and every fight. Instead he stopped only after every two or three to get his breath back. This lead to him fighting more often and with his new experience, he fought almost ten times as many skirmishes per hour.

It allowed him to stop worrying about his future, but that only made him worry about the present more. Why did he have to worry about his cycle of death and resurrection when he was trying to avoid step one?

All the journals were right in saying that the best training was actual combat and not going through the motions in a peaceful setting. As one hunter wrote: "Sweating in peace only worked when bleeding in battle mattered."

It was only through fighting the denizens of Yharnam that he began picking up subtle nuances of battle, learning how exactly to move to retain momentum and dodge at the same time, adapting sword styles to flow better, none of which could be found swinging at a dummy or thin air.

That was not to say that everything was perfect. His first trip in Yharnam was a fluke. He had purposefully only ran into the dredges, the stragglers of the mad men.

These madness infected men and women rarely moved alone, they patrolled through the city for the most part. With Harry avoiding all, but the most empty streets, he had been able to kill lone wanderers with very little danger to his person.

This time, he purposefully placed himself in situations where he had to fight patrols. He needed to get better and restricting himself to picking apart one predictable enemy at a time did nothing for him in the long run.

As much as he hated it, he needed to have his life on the line and actually challenge himself to become a better fighter if he would ever get good enough to end the plague.

He had only died twice in his first visit to Yharnam and those were against single enemies, albeit one was a lycanthrope.

The second time around was vastly different. In the ten hours that Harry had arrived, he had experienced closer to five days straight of combat. The only reason he was able to keep going was that the lantern cured all exhaustion when he was brought back to life. Over the five days, he had accumulated close to fifteen new scars to his collection and several non-fatal scars spread throughout his body.

Many of these new wounds came from when he got clumsy during the fights or fatigued after hours of hunting. A split second of inattention in a fight against five people was grounds for a swift death in most cases. However, not all were his fault, some were just because he was unfortunate enough to come across a stray lycanthrope that wandered the streets and rooftops. He never managed to kill one, but by the fourth time he had been killed, he was able to at least maim it before it tore his chest apart.

With his most recent death, he had to rest and refused to get back to his feet after wiping his eyes.

"I'm tired." Harry told the bloody city. "I'm so tired."

He may have been at it for almost a week of time overall, but the sun was only just setting on his second day in Yharnam.

The pale orange and deeper reds lit up the sky and Harry just stopped to watch the sunset. The beasts would be there when he got up, they always were.

This awful place did not deserve such a beautiful view of the sun. This city belonged in a deep dark hole that was never graced by the light of day.

While watching the sun dip below the forested mountains in the distance, Hadry poked and prodded at the new scars on his body. Luckily, he managed to keep most of the attacks from hitting his face and those that did, none of them killed him or were given time to heal so they didn't scar over when he was resurrected.

There were many different scars, each one taught him a new trick that he learned the hard way. He had a bit of pride in him that he had managed to learn from most of the wounds. He no longer planted himself on the ground and remained stationary which had lead to many of his deaths, rather he adapted his small size into his style and was constantly on the move. By no means was he great, but he was getting there. Maybe if he spent a month longer in the city, he would be able to hold his own without dying every five or six hours as was becoming common.

At least blood healed his wounds completely and there was no red and puffy stage for his scarring. It went straight to smooth white lines and patches that didn't pull when he stretched.

Bundling into his jacket and laying his blade across his lap, he closed his eyes and just rested for awhile. He had to plan out his next move at least.

He wasn't getting anything done with fighting lycans. They were just too powerful and he had nowhere near the skills to take them down at his current level. The huntsmen patrols he broke up provided him plenty of targets and practice, but finding the patrols in a small enough number to not immediately overwhelm him was the problem.

As he was, he couldn't come up with anything to solve his dilemma. Maybe a second opinion would be best?

He made the obligatory trip back to where he died to grab the absolutely massive pool of echoes that he had collected by getting a drop on the men that had been clustered around. The echoes fortunately never left the location of his death so the lycan that did him in wouldn't be anywhere nearby for at least five hours.

There was only one lantern he had access to at the moment so he trekked back to wear he had woken up. The trip back was just as difficult to make the other way. The amount of monsters wandering the streets aimlessly grew the higher the moon rose.

On the way, he stumbled across a patrol of eight men and two dogs. The men were quick to let go of the dogs' leashes. Dogs were always hard for Harry to kill because they were innocent of the madness that affected their owners.

That didn't mean he wouldn't fight back though and he broke apart his twin blades clumsily. The dogs charged directly at him with little regard to their safety.

A side step and twin thrust and both blades skewered into the dogs. One jerked to a stop as it ran completely up the blade while the other fell past him. The accumulated blood may as well have been oil for how slippery it made his grip. His left blade went with the dog while his right wetly slid out of the other dog.

It wasn't the first time this had happened and he barely paused at the loss of half his weaponry, he had learned that; to stop was to die when faced with so many enemies and the whole point of all of this was not to die.

Getting in close made them careless in their rage and it worked against them. He wasn't superhumanly fast, but he was too fast to keep up for most of these huntsmen with diminished mental ability.

When the last of them fell in a gout of blood and gore, Harry continued on with his journey after looting their bodies and retrieving his weapon. As much as he tried to force himself on, he just couldn't keep fighting for the day. His break just proved that he was running on fumes. His body may have been restored, but his mind was starting to wane and he was dancing with death by going into battle without being ready.

His blades of mercy were so stained in blood that they were becoming hard to use so he had to leave to the dream and clean them. He did not have the materials to do so on hand and after he had lost his grip on his sword from the blood splattered on it, he knew that he had put it off as much as he could.

There were also several enhancements for his body he wanted now that he was used to his new ones. While actual training yielded good results for his reflexes and ability to handle his weapons. He could not bring his cardio and strength up quick enough through pure training.

It didn't hurt that Harry had learned through conversations with his friend in the Dream, that the more he increased his vitality and strength, the more that he would be able to survive. He was wrong in thinking that it just increased each attribute as if he was in a game. It increased everything to do with the attribute. With vitality and strength; his skin would get harder to cut, his bones thicker and his muscles more dense, while endurance strengthened his lungs, made his blood flow faster and caused the life giving fluid to carry more oxygen to his muscles, at least that was what his limited knowledge of biology told him.

He reached the lantern and laid his hand on it, thus solidifying the timeline and transporting himself back to the dream. The patrols that he had eliminated in this run were forever dead, but the ones that he had killed beforehand were still wandering around.

"Miss?" Harry smiled lightly when he found his friend sleeping amongst the flowers behind the workshop. There was a small stone bench roughly carved out of a couple rocks that laid partially hidden behind the foliage.

She yawned quietly and her eyes lit up when they saw him. "Harry, you're back. Welcome back to the Dream, Good Hunter." She stood up and bowed shallowly.

"You don't have to do that." Harry said. "You can just say 'hello.'"

"But I always welcome hunters back from their time in the waking world." She frowned lightly. "'Tis only polite."

"Oh, sorry." Harry stammered.

"'Tis alright, you meant no harm." She replied and sat back down while patting the bench next to her. "What brings the Good Hunter back to Dream?"

"I actually wanted to reinforce my body with echoes, but can that wait?" Harry replied as he sat on the bench and leaned against the backrest. Now that he had sat down, the weight of his exhaustion finally hit him.

After literal days of being on his feet, just sitting was heavenly. Sitting next to his friend in a beautiful garden and not in Yharnam was even better.

"Of course." She nodded. "Is everything alright?"

_No _"I just want to rest a bit." Harry replied closing his eyes. "It's been awhile."

"I'll be here for you." Her soft lilting voice was like a lullaby. "For whatever you need."

"Thank you." Harry managed to mumble.

It only took a couple more minutes before he couldn't help himself and fell asleep. The cool air and constant breeze coupled with the peace that the garden exuded was too much for him to fight against.

Rather than wake up on the ground or in one of his two beds as he was used to, he found himself lying on a hard surface. His head however was on something rather soft and warm.

The sweet smell of the blossoms seemed even more powerful and there was a hint of wood and moon mixing with it. Along with the scent, humming filled the air in a deep hymn-like tune that stirred something in his chest.

Something was moving gently through his hair and scratching his head lightly. The feeling was foreign, but it was not bad. He didn't want to open his eyes and look around as if that may break the spell and stop what was happening.

Eventually he had to wake up though and he opened his eyes. He squinted for a moment in the light before looking up and seeing the caretaker looking out at the endless clouds with a relaxed smile. Her long fingers pushed through his hair and he was almost coaxed back to sleep.

Harry exaggerated a yawn to alert her and started to sit up with a small blush on his face. Now that he was more awake, he realized that his soft pillow was just her lap.

"Did you sleep well?" She asked, straightening out her dress and folding her hands into her lap. "You must have been tired after your long hunt."  
"I- Yes." Harry managed to say. "Thank you."

She nodded her head and grabbed his hand lightly and brought it back to her lap. Her fingers traced over the small scars and across the callouses that covered his palms. "Now that you have gotten some rest, would you like to embolden your spirit?" She asked.

"Yes." Harry nodded and sat up straighter. "I want to repeat what we did last time, but I want to focus more on endurance and vitality than strength this time."

"Only those two?" She asked as she tapped into his essence. "What of your dexterity or bloodtinge?"

"I'm fast already, enough that I can put it off and bloodtinge is a lost cause." Harry shrugged lightly. He had thought about it and it was probably because he was so new to this world. "The only reason I... die is that I slow down or get tired."

"Of course, dear Hunter." She nodded. "Please kneel so we can begin."

Harry rose from the bench and did as she commanded easily. Knelt down, he was almost even with her sitting down.

"Now shut your eyes." She said tracelike. Her voice gained an ethereal quality as she leaned forward. He did as she bid and a moment later he felt her forehead touch his. "Relax and let the echoes of those you have overcome become your strength."

Unlike before, it was not a warm fire channeled through his body. This time it was an inferno that burned all that it touched. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, getting louder and stronger the more he felt the echoes surge through him. Pins and needles started from his chest and moved through his limbs in waves, each time it got more uncomfortable and his muscles tightened before relaxing.

Rather than being over quickly like last time, he knelt there for what seemed to be days. He couldn't tell when it would end, if it ever would. Before he had channeled the echoes of a weak lycanthrope and a dozen or so madmen, now he had several dozens if not hundred people worth sitting behind his heart.

Just when he thought that it would never finish, a near unnoticeable wave of energy washed through him before withdrawing to where all the unused echoes rested. He didn't even need to move to know that it was almost completely different than before.

He opened his eyes and wasn't surprised to see golden eyes staring right back at him. "How are you feeling, dear Harry?"

"I feel... different." said Harry confused. He stood up and felt his joints protest like they had been in the same position for an eon. His joints popped and cracked as he straightened out his back and limbs. A part of him was surprised that dust hadn't fallen from his body as he rose.

His muscles responded instantly with an ease that he had never had before. He took off his jacket and his friend took it without having to ask and draped it over her arm without pause. His arms were not grotesquely muscled like a bodybuilder, but there was a tone there that had never been there before and his muscles were definitely larger than they were before. He knew that the rest of his body was probably the same as before.

In a maneuver that he would never have done before all of this, he fell straight down to the ground and caught himself in a push up position. A quick test had him able to do push ups of various kinds with absolutely no difficulty and he didn't even feel a hint of exertion when doing them.

He pushed off the ground as a final test and flailed as he fell back and to his side as the amount of power behind his push surprised him. A quiet chuckle came from the one that had changed him so profoundly. He looked up sheepishly and saw that she was trying her best to hide her laughing behind her hand.

"I thought that you only increased my endurance and vitality." Harry said. He watched her compose herself before she answered.

"One's body is not just a set of attributes, all are interconnected. When I increased specific attributes, I focus on the functions that dictate them, but some of them may also be linked to others." She explained as she handed his jacket to him after he stood up. "Such amounts of echoes emboldening your spirit, no matter which attribute increased, very little didn't change."

"Got it." Harry hung his coat behind him as he took a seat next to her. He looked down at his hand and flexed it. "My body almost doesn't feel like me anymore."

Her hand grasped his own. "Echoes enhance, they do not replace." She replied. "You are still Harry, hunter of the first workshop."

Harry squeezed her hand back. "I know, it was just a passing thought." He replied. "I've been wondering. How do you know how to channel echoes?"

"I do not know how I came about these abilities." She answered after a moment. "Just that I came into being knowing how to use the echoes left behind on hunters to help. I chose to think that this is why I was made. To help others fulfil their callings."

"Is this really what you want though?" Harry asked, taken aback at the complete acceptance of her role. "To just channel echoes?"

"Of course." She smiled beatifically. "I am helping those dear to me survive and thrive on their hunts. There are few nobler goals. What more can I ask for?"

"I guess when you put it like that." Harry was a little startled at just how much emotion she put into what she was saying, but that didn't make what she said not ring for him. She had found her calling, while it was not one that he would choose or one that she had chosen for herself, she had found one.

"If I could not channel blood echoes, than I wouldn't be able to help you with your own noble fate." She said and a bucket of ice water washed through him. He had managed to forget about his hunt for a moment. "I want to help you. I want you to stay dreaming."  
For some reason she blushed lightly at the words and refused to look him in the eye afterward. Harry replied by reaffirming his hold on her hand. He refused to lie to her and say that he agreed with her, but he understood what she meant.  
She did not want him to leave her behind.

If only he could dream, but not stay a hunter. That would be perfect. He could still spend time with her and he wouldn't have Yharnam hanging over his head and have the blood of so many staining his hands. Life wasn't that fair though.


End file.
